Wake

Loading player...
With so many appeals for us to be happy all the time--and with these appeals usually advertised as products and services promising to help us achieve it--it's no wonder we feel so trounced by the very act of seeking. In "Wake" by Camille Rankine, from her collection Incorrect Merciful Impulses, we get a glimpse into the muscular effort pursing happiness demands of us. We see how acknowledging pain and grief--the seeming antithesis of happiness--is inherent in this effort.
11 Dec 2024 English South Africa Arts · Society & Culture

Other recent episodes

Oral Fixation

Poetry allows us to explore who we are while moving beyond understanding. In "Oral Fixation" Alison C. Rollins's examines iconic family lore, piecing together who she is from what has been told and retold. She borrows from linguistics and psychology, looking for meaning even in the slippery in-between.
27 Jan 8 min

Poem Number 7

Pablo Neruda was the quintessential poet, prolific in his quest to not only speak music from the heart but also to inspire humanity in love and revolution. Neruda's career spanned from his teens into his late sixties, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature two years before his…
22 Jan 8 min

At the fishhouses

A moment is more than the sum of its parts, but a sum it is--of the sensory input we take in, memories we call to mind, the conscious and unconscious experiences that have accrued in our bodies. Savouring the moment is savouring all of this. Paisley Rekdal's "At the fishhouses"…
11 Feb 7 min

Black Magic Brother

Addiction casts a spell. It can bewitch and beguile and create an illusory world within a world. It is a sort of theatre with a stage, performer and involuntary audience. For the closest of audience -- friends and family -- denial and hope prolong the painful drama. In "Black Magic…
2 Jan 8 min

Telling the Wasps

Sorrow undoes our sense of order. But that doesn't stop us from wanting to organise it into stages or map its timeline. In "Telling the Wasps", poet Paisley Rekdal creates an intimacy with grief, speaking to rather than about it and enlisting other species as audience for her pain.
20 Jan 6 min