Charl-Pierre Naudé
[South Africa] 1958–
Charl-Pierre Naudé is one of the most interesting poets of South Africa, although he has published only one volume, Die nomadiese oomblik (The Nomadic Moment), which appeared in 1995. His firstling was reviewed positively in the South African press, one reviewer calling it the strongest debut of the past decade. It went on to win the prestigious Ingrid Jonker prize for poetry in 1997.
In actual fact, poetic debuts are rather sparse in South Africa. The Dutch poet Gerrit Komrij in his mammoth anthology of Afrikaans poetry selected no fewer than eight poems from Die nomadiese oomblik. Rather a lot for a debutant – an honour conferred on few poets.
Compared with the poetry of countrymen and contemporaries such as Gert Vlok Nel and Loit Sôls, Naudé’s poetry is markedly aesthetic; it lacks the exuberant sensitivity and romantic agony one finds in Vlok Nel’s poetry, and the tinge of didacticism in Sôls language experiments. No, in the four sections of this volume Naudé goes back to the old poetic forms and even practises sonnets – all free verse, it’s true, but no less remarkable.
I suspect that poetically Naudé feels best at home with poets like Wilma Stockenström and T.T. Cloete, and surely with the great example of many a South African poet, Peter Blum (1925–1990), seeing the humour in his work. Take for instance the poem ‘I hate my bank manager’. But surrealism, too, reigns supreme, different in form compared to the surreal idiosyncrasy of Breyten Breytenbach. From the versatility which Naudé brings to the fore, it is evident that we are dealing with a keen observer.
In an interview with a South African newspaper, Naudé says that poetry to him has a social as well as an individual component; typical for a South African poet cum journalist to say that. Naudé’s other ambition is of one day becoming captain of a barge and sail the Congo river in Zaire.
Although he is principally known as an Afrikaans poet, Naudé’s English translations of his own work more than merit publication and a wider audience. Of these translations, the late Lionel Abrahams said:
[they] are fresh and very engaging contributions to South African English poetry: I know nothing similar. The poetic quality lies less in the diction, imagery and form and more in the imagined dreamlike (yet not coldly surrealistic) situations and their rooting in realistic place-descriptions and characterizations, and in its invocations of South African history, and in occasional references to scientific theories.
Robert Dorsman
Translated by Ko KoomanWith additional information by Gus Ferguson.
Poems
Ancestral Ground
How I Got My Name
The Man Who Saw Livingstone
Against Love
Pieced Together
The Mercenary
Publications (selection):
Die nomadiese oomblik, Tafelberg uitgewers, Kaapstad 1995.