Name: The drums beat all night
Rating: 5

A privilege and a gift to be able to write

An interview with Shabbir Banoobhai

by Rajendra Chetty

This interview, an edited version of the original conducted between the interviewer and the poet in May 2001, provides interesting insight into the writer’s political and literary influences, style and social views. Rajendra Chetty is now Professor in the Faculty of Education and Social Sciences at Cape Peninsula University of Technology as well as President of the English Academy of South Africa.

You explore relationships extensively in your poems, especially those with God and society. What is the link between your religion and your poetry?

There is probably a very deep, all-pervasive link. I would say almost everything I write is spiritual in some way. It’s not something I set out to do. It’s part of my nature that reveals itself in my writing.

a spiritual force
expresses itself in my poetry

Is your poetry an expression of your religious commitment?

It is not an expression of religious commitment in the sense that I am trying to create artefacts deliberately for religious purposes – but I do have a commitment to a ‘spiritual force’ that expresses itself in my poetry.

Have techniques of religious poetry permeated your writings? If yes, in what ways?

I am not certain what is meant by ‘techniques of religious poetry’. I do not consciously write ‘religious poetry’ or use any special techniques that may be associated with the writing of religious poetry, but I am conscious of using techniques essential for writing what I consider strong poetry.

For example, you use incantatory techniques?

Indeed, I have used the incantatory technique in poems such as ‘Iqbal, it is winter here still’. So there may well be influences I am not overtly aware of.

Coming back to ‘Iqbal’ and incantatory techniques, was the Qur’an an influence here?

The power of sound is very noticeable in the recitation of the Qur’an. In fact, recently I have learnt that the single most decisive way of changing a person’s consciousness is through sound. I have probably been influenced by the sounds of the Qur’an– and perhaps even more, by the sounds and cadences of spiritual songs and poetry in the Urdu language. As well as influenced in some unknown way (so I have been told) by the Islamic poets of the past.

I’m glad that you have mentioned these interesting influences on your work. Say more about this.

Douglas Livingstone, my poetry-writing mentor, said a long time ago that when he read my work he discovered that ‘each line of the work was subliminally ignited by the ancient great Islamic poets’. He went on to add: “of whose writing he [I] knew surprisingly little’. It would be lovely if this is true and there is a link of some kind to the poets Douglas referred to!

I like good poetry

You mention a few catalysts that led to your insights into social and political issues. How would you define the poet’s role within social and political struggles?

I don’t think that any one kind of person with any particular kind of ability has sole responsibility for transforming the world around him or her. We all have this responsibility and if the poet has words that he can use, well, then it is his responsibility to use them well; and if the musician has music that he can use well for the same purpose, then it is his responsibility to use his music well. There are many kinds of abilities human beings have. All are gifts that should be used to the fullest. So to the extent that the poet is able to see things in society in a particularly meaningful way as a result of his ability, then the poet has a responsibility to comment on what he sees and to try to transform his environment and the world for the better.

Parallels have been drawn between your writings and that of T.S. Eliot, John Donne, Dylan Thomas and Louis MacNiece. Are these poets you admire? And who amongst them has had the greatest influence on your own writing?

I am often asked this question.My honest answer is I like good poetry. I cannot think of one poet that I like more than others. When I read a good poem (‘good’ obviously, is subjective), I am moved by it.Incidentally, I like all the poets you have just mentioned!

Apart from Douglas Livingstone, is there any other person who has played a major role in your development as a poet?

Douglas was the major influence. What Douglas taught me, primarily, is that writing poetry is a craft. I had always felt before I met him – and I was quite young when I did – that I had to write a poem ‘perfectly’ the first time I put my thoughts down on paper and if it wasn’t ‘perfect’ then I couldn’t do much about it subsequently – that was it! But Douglas taught me that I needed to work on my poetry, I needed to treat it as an artefact – to shape it, to hone it, to polish it and to make it strong and lasting – and that was a lesson for which I have never stopped being grateful to him. I was really privileged to have met Douglas and to have learnt from him. This influence has stayed with me all my life and can be seen in all my work.

The other person who played a big role early in my writing career was Mike Kirkwood. Mike was more critical of my early work than was Douglas. Douglas liked my work from the very outset, but Mike was almost never happy, was always critical. Perhaps, that was a good thing because I had to work harder to please him. So when Mike finally agreed to publish my first book that for me was a huge sign of having accomplished something worthwhile as a poet. Despite Douglas’ approval, I think I had felt more pleased (relieved!) when Mike finally said ‘yes, I will publish this’ than when I first learnt that Douglas liked my writing – when he said: ‘I wonder what the world is going to do with you.’

Comment on the fact that many of the poems in echoes of my other self are drawn from images of nature.

This is not something I noticed at the time of writing the poems in this collection. I became aware of it after the book was published through reading reviews that pointed this out.

What I like about Iqbal is his huge optimism about human nature – an unquenchable desire to make the world come alive

What was the catalyst for the long poem dedicated to the Islamic poet and philosopher, Muhammad Iqbal?

I was reading a lot of Iqbal at the time. What I like about him is his huge optimism about human nature – an unquenchable desire to make the world come alive. That inspired me. I looked at South Africa and thought how essential his philosophy was for the South African Muslim community. The ‘Iqbal’ poem is perhaps the only poem I have written that is specifically addressed to the Muslim community. I was trying to say in it that we needed to come alive within our country, to actually contribute to it ourselves.

How do you strike a healthy equilibrium between emotions and rationality?

I would like to think it’s a gift in as much as it’s there – supplemented by reading and reflection. I am grateful it’s there – this inner balance.

Are there notes of anger in your first work, for example, in the repetitive hardening imagery in the poem, ‘the most i fear of heavy rain’? When you look back to your first collection, do you see development – a change in your poetry and writing style?

I like this poem a lot. It says more than one imagines it might; it says something, takes you to something else but then brings you back forcefully to the subject. So you almost never know where you’re being led, but you are being led very decisively to the heart of the poem, which is about the removal of people from their homes and their land. It was written at the height of the apartheid regime’s madness. The anger is not ‘shafting’ anger, but the poem certainly is an indictment of apartheid and of those who implemented it. It is a very deep indictment.

Neither my writing style nor the themes I write on have changed – but I would like to think the writing in the second collection was more taut, stronger and deeper, than in the first.

Your second anthology shadows of a sun-darkened land was published in 1984.What is the underlying meaning in ‘the bread i eat is crusted’? A critic referred to it as obscure.

The poem was written at a time of crisis, one of the worst times we were experiencing under the apartheid regime. The fact that I could eat when many others could barely afford to made me feel incredibly guilty. The bread in my hand ‘became crusted’ and started to taste of ‘a labourer’s sweat’ because those who were labouring away so that others could survive were barely able to survive themselves.Eating a slice of bread in these circumstances felt like eating the flesh of those who had laboured in its production.

the poem ‘for fatima meer’ was found to be
a threat to the security of the state!

Do your poems stem from personal experiences? For example, the felt politics of daily life at the time of writing echoes of my other self are accurately expressed in the poem ‘the border’.

the border

is as far
as the black man
who walks alongside you

as secure
as your door
against the unwanted knock

I’ll tell you a little bit more about ‘the border’ that not too many people know. It had another stanza at the end, which was cut off because the publisher and I were very afraid of the security police, heightened by the fact that another political poem had been banned. The poem,‘for fatima meer’, published in a magazine, was found to be a threat to the security of the state or something silly like that! So when I published it in the collection, I took out the ‘meer’ in the title as a precaution!

‘the border’ initially concluded with the stanza:

as comforting
as timol’s death
in vorster square

Ahmed Timol was an anti-apartheid activist who was thrown out of the tenth floor window of John Vorster Square Police Station (and to his death) by the security police. We thought it too provocative to include this stanza in the book version and published the poem without this stanza. We had to.

I tried to combine protest against the politics and oppression
of the time in a way that would make it possible
for the poetry to survive the protest

In your early works, you dealt with the political and social problems of South Africa, but in a different vein to most other protest poets of the 1980’s. Was there any reason for this ‘aloofness’ from the Staffrider poets?

I don’t think that I intended to remain aloof in any way. All I ever wanted was to write good poetry – and Douglas had impressed on me that ‘a good poet is someone who has been dead for a hundred years and one of his works is still read’! I regarded this as a benchmark for all writing I wanted to publish. I took the act of writing very seriously, considered it a privilege and a gift to be able to write. Furthermore, I always wrote from my inner self – tried to understand my own inner self and the inner selves of others. If the country was in trouble, it really meant its people were in trouble. It meant that those who supported apartheid were troubled human beings who lacked knowledge, understanding, generosity,and were full of fear. Therefore, even in my political writing, I looked within the hearts of human beings to find out the underlying causes of oppression, injustice, cruelty, and the forgetting of one’s own humanity and that of others. There are many political poems in my work, but they nearly always also delve into something deeper that I question or probe. .

Can you comment more on this ‘unique’ protest strategy?

In my discussions with Douglas we talked about political poems, which he felt wouldn’t survive. He encouraged me to write about things that would survive. But I didn’t just want to write only about the things that would survive and ignore the political turmoil, which I knew wouldn’t survive – and it’s good that it didn’t survive. So I tried to do both, combine what my heart cried out to do –that is, protest against the politics and oppression of the time – but do so in a way that would make it possible for the poetry to survive the protest –: including by incorporating political protesting otherwise very personal poetry, as well as by writing overt political poetry, but always trying to add a dimension that would allow a poem to live on.

Critics often distinguish between writers who link their works with political activism and those who write about other themes. Do you see poets who did not write against apartheid as being ‘different’, as having had a different ‘poetic constituency’ as such?

I very rarely judge others; if someone did not write about apartheid, then he or she did not. My understanding of spirituality,God and goodness leads me to believe that oppression can never survive – and this helps me greatly. It does not really matter who opposes oppression and who does not. The oppressor has no hope of survival, ultimately. If someone does not fight oppression there are many others who always will. Those who choose not to do so simply lose a spiritual benefit for themselves. I do not consider that they have failed society.

How do you handle the tension between politics and aesthetics in your own writing?

Perhaps a third of my poetry is political poetry. In choosing poems for both echoes and shadows, I have tried to keep this balance.

Many of your poems deal with personal relationships. How do these relationships influence your poetry?

I think it is great to be in love and to look around and see beauty, because in both you are seeing the Divine. So all exposure to beauty and to love brings me close, not only to the person I love, but also, I hope, to the Divine.

There is no alternative for a human being
but to remain optimistic, because life is such a powerful force!

In the following lines, you say: ‘not the yielding of seed to soil/ nor even the delivering of life from seed/ is certain/ but jerusalem shall be free’. Comment on the fact that you remain essentially optimistic in your poems?

There is no alternative for a human being but to remain optimistic, because life is such a powerful force! Much of life’s transformational ability depends on how secure we are within ourselves. I hope the poem reflects my sense of trust in God, in goodness and in the fact that goodness does prevail in the end. Life prevails!

You have implied that the protest must live as long as the poetry. Does this explain the intention behind poems like ‘they call you mister steve biko now you’re dead’, ‘the rain probes with a million eyes’?

Both the Biko poem and the Imam Haroon poem should live on because they give life to and celebrate the lives of those who can no longer do so themselves – those who sacrificed their lives for our freedom and to whom we owe a great debt.

What is the relevance of the three components of sea, sky and land in inward moon outward sun?

The sub-headings in the collection are simply a way of grouping poems dealing with different subject matter. I looked for a way of separating them so that the collection would read better. I decided to use sea, sky and land because they flow into each other. ‘Land’ is easy because it relates to poems that deal with issues of the land and other social and political issues. The sea and sky poems deal mainly with the human spirit and love – in a different context – though most of my political poems ultimately are spiritual or love poems. The poet, Steven Watson,suggested this to me. When I started to plan the new book, I selected a quorum of poems that could help make up a complete volume. But because I had not published for 15 years between my second and third collections, I looked for people to read and critique the poems, as I felt had grown rusty in many ways and I wanted to know if I was still ‘a good writer’.

To me two things are absolutely essential in a poem
– unique imagery and good rhythm –

I wanted to be sure I was writing poetry worth publishing. Douglas and Mike were no longer around, so I looked for friends who would assist me. I turned to Eve Horwitz, who had done a review of shadows of the sun-darkened land many years previously. Eve gave me her thoughts on what I had written. Stephen Watson was incredibly helpful, as were Helen Moffett, Michael Green, Mike Chapman and Patrick Cullinan. I really needed help after all the years of dormancy. I benefitted greatly from the criticism I received. It helped me leave out many poems that did not work and finally to come up with a collection, I felt was good.

How would you describe your style of writing?

To me two things are absolutely essential in a poem – unique imagery and good rhythm – the fundamental elements in a good poem. If you ask about things that are unique to me, these would be an ability to get to the essence of things and to crystallize this essence in writing.

Are you essentially a lyrical poet?

Very much so!

Which is your favourite collection and why?

Probably shadows of a sun-darkened land!

Do you forge links with other South African Indian poets or writers?

I have warm links with many writers but I do not have the kind of link where I associate with or stay in contact with them as regularly as I did when I was in Durban. Besides, since coming to Cape Town, my professional work has been extremely demanding!

How have the critics received your poetry?

This becomes really subjective. I think my work has mostly been well received. There have been reviews that have not been completely favourable, but that is to be expected. It would be surprising if everybody thought everything I write is good. I just hope I don’t get to a time when everyone thinks everything I write is bad!

Who do you see as your audience?

I hope everyone who reads, who cares, who feels, who loves – everybody.

What have you been reading recently?

My recent readings are mainly books on spirituality and books on love. I particularly enjoy reading the works of Rumi. Many of the authors I read have a profound understanding of life.

What message do you have for your readers out there?

For anyone who reads poetry – whether it is my work or that of others – it is important that they find poetry they enjoy.

Tell me something about inward moon outward sun, your new book due to be published by the University of Natal Press.

It has been very important to me to get inward moon outward sun published, because this collection closes a chapter in my life. Whether I will write again quite like I have written in the past, I don’t know. We will have to wait for time to show where my writing is headed.

Reviews:

In Shabbir’s poetry collection, the drums beat all night, the title which takes itself from a poem about imminent death we see the call for spiritedness even in the face of death. In many of the poems, even those dealing with serious social subjects or about personal hurt, lightness is seen in the poet at play in the world of the imagination, the poet playing with the clay of words and celebrating joyfully wit, humour and the embrace of life.

- Roshila Nair, editor of the collection.

September 18, 2014

A river that flows downhill needs to hold itself together to reach the sea. In its flowing to the sea are important lessons in oneness and togetherness. Water needs to combine with water to build the momentum it needs for its journey. But how does a river flow upwards, to refresh the source from which it began?

- From the mirror’s memory

September 10, 2014

There are very few book-length sequences of poems and it excites me to encounter this form in the work of a well-known South African poet. To sustain a cycle of poems is to begin to dismantle the barriers between a novel or short story and poetry.

- Joan Metelerkamp, well-known South African poet.

September 10, 2014

Shabbir’s works present us with a language of lightness to help us navigate our way through heavy issues while at the same time it is woven through with the key metaphor of light, the opposite of or complement to darkness, a metaphor with strong spiritual association. This darkness is also the darkness within our selves, in those aspects of mind and being closed off to the human spirit or divine soul, and which for the spiritual seeker is strived against in religious terms and for the secular individual in moral terms.

- Roshila Nair, editor of the collection

September 10, 2014

wisdom in a jug contains reflections of love and wisdom – wise loving and loving wisdom drawn from an eternal well, restoring to all who love, the preciousness of the gift of love.

knowledge
is the garment of the heart
its stitches – god’s beautiful names

- From wisdom in a jug – reflections of love

September 10, 2014

"The volume contains pieces on a variety of themes – religious poems, love poems, philosophical poems, poems of social and political concern. Through all of them, one senses the poet’s personality – sensitive, meditative, scrupulous, passionate, humane. Banoobhai’s apprehension of society and its pains and injustices is grounded, then, in an impassioned sense of the possibilities of human expansion and human relationships".

Professor Colin Gardner – University of Kwa-Zulu Natal

September 10, 2014

when love burns, we call it sun
when love cools, we call it moon

when love falls, we call it rain
when love forms, we call it cloud

- From lyrics in paradise

A wise, distinctive voice – powerful, pure poetry.

- Michael Chapman, renowned anthologist of South African poetry.

September 18, 2014

In the body of South African writing, his is a rare voice with the courage and the artistic skill to articulate a contemporary spirituality convincingly. The utmost simplicity of expression is used to conceal and reveal, at one and the same time, ideas of intense profundity. The poems are often meditative songs of love, longing and loss in a mystical world but as often remain rooted in the social and political struggles of this world, as depicted in the stanza above taken from the poem ‘sarajevo’ for which he received the 2001 Thomas Pringle Award for poetry.

- Kobus Moolman, poet and academic, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

September 10, 2014

Shabbir Banoobhai’s brilliant exposition on leadership is an invaluable approach to reperceiving the nature of leadership in the coming century. All aspiring and established leaders should read this book and share its lessons widely to transform themselves and the communities they serve.

- Dr Koffi M. Kouakou, MD, Stratnum Futures, Formerly Senior Lecturer at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand

March 29, 2017

Shabbir Banoobhai again gives us poems of an intense yet simple lyricism. The simplicity of Banoobhai’s poetry is deceptive. His language is simple, his words chosen with an almost austere delicacy. The meaning of his poems is immediately accessible and the emotional appeal direct. His images are the universal ones of land, sea and sky, used with a Biblical economy of detail. Yet the meaning of these poems often has a profundity that yields ever-widening rings of understanding, like a stone thrown into still water.

- Eve Horwitz, University of the Witwatersrand.

September 23, 2014

Shabbir Banoobhai seems to have arrived at the point where he sees in all human beings and creatures – in all of creation – reflections of the light of God. Even in the darker and darkest face of humanity he sees a flicker of primordial and transcendental light.

Mphutlane wa Bofelo, well-known South African poet, essayist and social activist.

September 10, 2014

I was able to read this novel in one day, in an almost uninterrupted swathe. I could not put it down; it was too compelling, also too demanding. Hypnotic ... I like it very much it indeed. The tension in the three love triangles rises to a nearly unbearable pitch, and the overlapping and interweaving of the triangles is extraordinary. So much is not said or explained, almost too much so; but the craft of it lies in the unanswered questions … I felt sorrow when the pages came to an end. I had become so invested in the characters. I wanted more!

– Dr. Helen Moffet, South African academic, poet and editor.

September 25, 2014

at least take off your shoes
when you go dancing
on the heart of god

- From water would suffice – reflections of love

September 10, 2014

The collection in your hands is an inspired and an inspiring one.

The poems, essays and reflections challenge us to see the Divine without creating a God limited by our preconceptions. They remind us of the presence of beauty everywhere, of our essential oneness, the need for a life of compassion, and the uniqueness of love.

- Omid Safi, Professor of Islamic Studies, University of North Carolina.

September 23, 2014

"Shabbir Banoobhai again gives us poems of an intense yet simple lyricism. The simplicity of Banoobhai’s poetry is deceptive. His language is simple, his words chosen with an almost austere delicacy. The meaning of his poems is immediately accessible and the emotional appeal direct. His images are the universal ones of land, sea and sky, used with a Biblical economy of detail. Yet the meaning of these poems often has a profundity that yields ever-widening rings of understanding, like a stone thrown into still water. Banoobhai’s strength lies in this combination of simplicity and universality. The most outstanding feature of the poetry is that it is infused with such clear intelligence … so that feelings become intelligence and intelligence, feeling…"

Eve Horwitz – University of the Witwatersrand

September 10, 2014

I am fascinated … In tone, and in the sections set in an indeterminate time and place, it reminded me of JM Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, although its worldview is less harsh, more forgiving, and suffused with a sense of what one can only call love. It also carries whiffs of David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life. The story seems to operate on a meta-level, although it is free from the overly clever games of postmodernist meta-fiction.

- Rustum Kozain, award-winning South African poet.

September 25, 2014

Help us to see your presence everywhere;
in the mule carrying a load of concrete blocks,
its drooping tongue covered in flies;
in the darkness forever fighting for its share of light

- From dark light – the spirit’s secret

September 10, 2014

A luminous work of the heart containing profound reflections on the nature of the Divine, Prophetic and human consciousness, love, justice, peace and war. A genuine and original Sufi primer for the 21st-century seeker, reflecting an important development in contemporary South African spiritual thought, it is both a treasury of wisdom and a hands on learning manual for our times.

- Associate professor Sa’diyya Shaikh, Department of Religious Studies, University of Cape Town

September 10, 2014

In these reflections, meditations, prayers and poems written over a month of fasting and shared daily with his friends via email, Shabbir Banoobhai describes the journey of love as a ‘journey of the heart, in the heart, from the heart, to the heart’ and his experience as:

one of spirit engaging with spirit – sometimes trying to remove the veil of selfhood that covers our hearts, or that of ignorance covering our faces.

- From lightmail

September 10, 2014

In Leadership as Healing, Shabbir Banoobhai has crafted a journey into the deepest heart of leadership that is both pragmatic and poetic...Leadership as Healing is a resource that I would find essential to use in my academic work and experiential training.

- Professor Kriben Pillay, Graduate School of Business and Leadership, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

March 29, 2017

I first came to know Shabbir through his poems when I was struck by the clean simplistic line he generally favoured. But the simplicity was deceptive: he made each word (a sign of the true poet) carry great emotional and intellectual weight. An obsessive and talented poet, a precocious master of the Word and a fine lyricist to boot, almost every line of the work was subliminally ignited by the ancient great Islamic poets. He shares their prime qualities: sensuality, passion, brilliance of imagery, a holistic approach to nature, and love of God.

Knowing Shabbir Banoobhai, the man through his work, can illuminate something of the unknown. Here, then, is a further asset to and aspect of, South Africa’s uncommon humanity.

- Douglas Livingstone – renowned South African poet

September 10, 2014

This novel is a bold experiment and includes some wonderfully supple writing. It is full of ideas – more than one can say for many novels. I like the ease with which it shifts from narrative action to lyrical description to philosophical speculation – unusual, intriguing.

- Ivan Vladislavic, well-known South African novelist.

September 18, 2014

PAYMENT OPTIONS:

CUSTOMER INFORMATION:

NEW PAYMENT OPTION:

Recent Blog Posts