A Virtual Anthology
of Recent South African Poetry

Introduction

A poem is not a text, either on paper or screen. It is an event, an encounter between the reader or audience and the poem. Perhaps this is why every poet wishes for an appreciative audience. Traditionally, poets have published on paper in slim volumes and anthologies.

The UCTPoetryWeb was in a discussion, as it often is, about publication and distribution. Getting into print is difficult for any but a very few of us. It is not an economic proposition, even the most sympathetic book publishers tell us, and spell it out tediously in numbers. "Expect so many sales. So much for printing costs, so much for overheads, salaries, distribution and so on... See, no profit!  We have families to feed and must regrettably decline your manuscript."  Even Saint Gus of Snailpress, who has been the backbone of SA poetry publication during the 90's has had to scale down.

A publisher had called for poems by women and there had been some discussion on the web about what this might mean. I thought, "Sheesh! I could put an anthology onto the web for nothing, without having to get funds or do much work. It would reach far more readers than a paper anthology, too."

So I emailed a Call for Poems to the PoetryWeb and a few poet friends. Wanting to limit the project, I set an absurdly short deadline - 26th March, about six weeks after the call went out. The original email contained a pass-it-on message. I hoped for a chain-letter effect among South African poets. This anthology purports to represent nobody except those who responded, by email, to the call. This is another reason why I've called it a Virtual Anthology.

The poems came in slowly over six weeks. The men were quicker off the mark, and at one stage I began to panic, thinking that I might be faced with an all-male collection. Towards the end a number of women sent me some excellent poems, and the result is more-or-less balanced. My idea was that the process should be easy and that I should do as little work as possible.  I did not read hundreds of slim volumes and little magazines in search of the definitive South African poem. I did not actively seek poems from anybody but those to whom I sent the email - the PoetryWeb and a few friends. The chain-letter effect was not as powerful as I had hoped, but managed to get enough poems to make it more than worthwhile publishing. I hope that the Anthology will grow, but, for fear of making  a millstone of committment, I have limited the submission period to a year.

Almost all the poets who submitted work seem to have viewed the Anthology as an e-zine. They have given work which is, in the main, unpublished elsewhere. At the same time, the fact of it being an 'Anthology' has meant that they have selected the best of their recent work. This makes the anthology fresh, current, and gives a surprisingly high standard. I am not going to make generalisations or pick favourites - I leave that to the readers.

Mike Cope
14 April 2000