If Up's the word, my journey into poetry
My journey into poetry could be the same as a million other English speaking school boys growing up in the sixties in South Africa. Except, I was transplanted at the tender age of 9 some what as a refugee of one white colonizing country into another. My parents had taken the agonizing decision to leave the land they had chosen and head south to Johannesburg, to relative safety. Compared to refugees of today, ours was a sedate, planned and civilized affair. Although the up sticks at that impressionable age was somewhat traumatic, it forever defined me, it formed me and the person I was to become, in a positive, glass-half-full find of way... afrikaans Afrikaans was to be learned in a special class for the "immigrants", I think there were three of us. We had the use of a tiny room that was closer to a broom closet, and for at least one lesson per day, use English only speakers, slowly became bilingual. A patient teacher, that i cannot recall, somehow instilled the b...