Joan Metelerkamp

Joan Metelerkamp Poems

Joan Metelerkamp Biography

Joan Metelerkamp was born in 1956, and grew up with her three brothers in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands, where her father farmed. She did a BA at the University of Natal, followed by a post-graduate diploma in acting at the University of Cape Town. She then worked for three years in educational drama and another three years teaching in university English departments. In 1990, married with two children, she completed her MA on the poetry of Ruth Miller while teaching at the University of Natal. In 1998 she moved with her family to the Knysna area of the Southern Cape, where she still lives. From 2000 to 2004 (and for one edition in 2008), she edited the poetry journal New Coin.)

The Best Poem Of Joan Metelerkamp

Sea

To have lost even the why or the what for -
to dream and to wake with the weight
of even the mechanical why even the mechanical wherefore -

the primitive one-string cello,
bent low playing a threnody, thread, theme I know,
into the night as I wake heaving it, hearing it -

like a chorus dissolving
not only sadness, sea,
but past sadness
past past sadness

now that I live so close to your sound, sea,
even at night wake to listen for you -
close to your smell
close and often to your salvage
your changing sand and rock shelf, sea,
lost generations
lost progenitors
past sadness, sea

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