Marguerite Poland - a short biography and bibliography of this KwaZulu-Natal author.Marguerite Poland was born in Gauteng on 3 April 1950
and when she was two years old, the Poland family relocated
to the Eastern Cape where she spent most of her formative
years. The landscape left an indelible mark within her and
in an article entitled “Making Stars Sing”
Poland’s fond
description of the Eastern Cape reads as follows:
“It is a beautiful place, surrounded by hills and forested
ravines. Ancient yellowwoods grow along the banks of the
river and gracious buildings are clustered among pasture and
cultivated lands. It is a Frontier Country and the stories
in the family about the happenings during the Xhosa Frontier
Wars are legion; heroes and heathens; skirmishes and
scourges, locusts and rinderpest; love and romance. The
church gardens were prosperous, the church large and
Victorian and the oaks that her great-grandmother had
planted – in memory to England – were huge and
spreading. It
was always a matter of pride that her great-grandfather
built the church with his own hands, making the bricks and
setting the windows”.
This extract not only highlights the importance of landscape
in Poland’s life, but also helps to situate her
historically. Key concepts in the above passage like
“Frontier Country”, “Xhosa Frontier
Wars” and the
“Victorian” buildings, give us an idea of
Poland’s
background and cultural heritage. Although her books may be
fictional, many of her stories are based on family
experiences. Shades (1993), for example, is based on
Poland’s great-great grandfather’s (Charles
Taberer’s)
experiences and those of other family members. This can be
seen as Poland’s search for her own
“shades” and her
identity in an historical context. According to
Poland, her great-great grandparents, who were stationed in
Kieskammahoek on the banks of the Mtwaku River in the
Eastern Cape, had been missionaries there from 1862 to 1913.
In her research, Poland discovered four letter-books of
Charles Taberer’s assistant priest, Reverend Cyril
Wyche, in
which he documented the minutiae of everyday living in
Kieskammahoek. Together with her great-grandmother’s
memoirs, Poland was able to determine the socio-historical
forces that contributed to the most important themes of
South African history: the debilitating effect of
colonialism, the iniquitous migrant labour system, the
tragedies of the rinderpest and the destruction of
traditional Xhosa culture.
Poland is the first to admit that although the
missionaries’
intentions may have been noble, in their zealous propagation
of Christianity, they often failed to recognise the cultural
richness of the indigenous people. The evangelists who came
to South Africa during the Victorian era were basically
British settlers who came to South Africa as pioneers,
either in search of a better life for themselves or to
change the ‘heathens’ and give them a
‘civilised’ identity.
The British who believed that their responsibility was to
God and their duty was to show the ‘heathens’
the light,
slowly eradicated the beliefs, religion and cultures of the
indigenous people. The introduction of Christianity to the
people of colour resulted in cultural and religious
conflict. Marguerite Poland however, does not see the
indigenous people as slaves. Living in a contemporary
post-apartheid era and being a writer, who has done abundant
research, she has become “cynical about
missionaries” (von
Klemperer 1993).
zoom
Marguerite Poland
|
Poland deals with historical facts, with social forces and
energies which interest her, as they have bearing upon her
individual spirit. Her love for the South African landscape
and its diverse cultures encouraged her to become deeply
involved with the indigenous people and their languages.
Just like her great-grandparents were, she is well versed in
Xhosa and isiZulu. After completing her secondary education
at St. Dominic’s Priory in Port Elizabeth, Marguerite
Poland
completed her Bachelor of Arts degree at Rhodes University,
majoring in Social Anthropology and Xhosa. Many of
Marguerite Poland’s children’s stories can be
linked to her
studies and the oral tradition. Her profound knowledge of
the African culture is evident in her descriptions of the
landscape and the flora and fauna that constitute it. In
1971, Marguerite Poland completed her honours degree in
African languages at Stellenbosch University, further
reiterating her alliance to Charles Taberer and their
allegiance to the African culture. Marguerite Poland married
Martin Oosthuizen, an attorney living and practising in
KwaZulu-Natal. This event in her life prompted her to move
to Kloof in KwaZulu-Natal. While living here she pursued her
academic career at the University of Natal where she
obtained her Masters Degree in Zulu literature. The title of
her dissertation was “A study of the Zulu folktales with
special reference to the Stuart collection.’
Poland explains her penchant for the African language:
“I have drawn inspiration from the oral tradition of the
various indigenous people, particularly the San. I am very
aware that there are difficulties and failures in trying to
‘fix’ the oral in the written word, but
‘oral literature’
and ‘written literature’, though they may
exhibit striking
differences, are not born in separate worlds. They feed each
other in subtle ways and my own work has drawn on both
traditions from the start”
As a result of her research and love for writing Marguerite
Poland penned numerous books for children, two of which were
awarded the Percy Fitzpatrick prize for South African
children’s literature: The Mantis and the Moon
(1979)
and The Woodash Stars (1983). Nqalu, the Mouse
with no Whiskers (1979) and Once at Kwafubesi
(1981) also received honourable mention at the Percy
Fitzpatrick awards function in 1980 and 1981 respectively.
Some of her stories were translated into Afrikaans and
published: Die Muis Sonder Snorbaard (1979), Die
Bidsprikaan en die Maan (1981): As die Boerboonblomme
Val (1983) and Die Vuurkoolsterre (1983). In 1989
The Mantis and the Moon (1979) was translated into
Japanese and it won Japan’s Sankei Awards.
Other books written by Marguerite Poland are Shadow of
the Wild Hare, Marcus and the Go-Kart, The Bush
Shrike(1982) and Marcus and the Boxing Gloves (1984).
With the exception of the “Marcus series’, which
features
characters based on her two daughters and illustrator Cora
Coetzee’s sons, all other books have some inclination
towards landscape and / or its inhabitants (flora and fauna
included). Brigid Keeley posits that Marguerite Poland is
“one of the first children’s writers in South
Africa to take
a look around her and write about what she saw”, thus
becoming a “pioneer of indigenous children’s
fiction”.
Poland’s first three books were all animal stories having
being inspired by the bush pigs, meerkats and porcupines
that frequented her homestead just outside Port Elizabeth.
With consummate ease, Poland combines an imaginative
storyline with her anthropological knowledge of African
cultures. Sometimes her magical animal stories broadly
follow traditional lines, such as when they turnout to be
‘pourquoi’ stories (for example, why the mantis
holds up his
legs in prayer), at other times they are highly inventive
stories of adventure, pathos and knock-out comedy.
The Woodash Stars is Marguerite Poland’s first book
about black children and the first to be published in seven
black languages, as well as in English and Afrikaans. This
book is a compilation of four short stories based on black
folklore and is illustrated in colour by Shanne Altshaler,
an East London illustrator. Later this book was adapted into
a ballet by a dance company and it proved very successful.
Similarly, in March 1997, The Mouse with no Whiskers
was staged as a professional production by the Playhouse
Puppet Company. Puppeteer Andrew Godbold, with assistance
from fellow puppeteer, Pillai Ngwenya, who worked on the
Zulu translations for segments of the play, adapted the tale
into a lively and mesmerising script.
Marguerite Poland also had a stint as a social worker in
Port Elizabeth and in Durban and she confirms that her
experiences as a social worker definitely influenced at
least one of the stories she has written. In 1997 Poland
contributed to a weekly column in the local newspaper,
The Mercury. Poland also worked as an ethnologist at the
South African Museum in Cape Town. Here she could access
artefacts and documents easily and this gave her the
opportunity to research fully the landscape in which she set
her stories as well as research every minute detail of all
the flora, fauna and indigenous group involved in her
fiction. In this regard she says that she is a “bit of a
frustrated scientist, very careful to get the names of
animals and plants right”.
After publishing eleven children’s books Marguerite Poland
turned her attention to adult fiction. She has, thus far,
published five novels – Train to Doringbult (1987),
Shades (1987), Iron Love (1999),
Recessional for Grace (2003). In 1998 Train to
Doringbult was shortlisted for the CNA Award and Shades
for the M-NET Award.
(This article was used with the permission of the author,
Mark Jacob, a PhD student working on Poland for his
dissertation)
Extract from Recessional For Grace (2003):
Chapter Sixteen
Godfrey sits at the table in the kitchen in the little house
by the store. He
has lit the lamp and he has laid out a rasher or two of
bacon, a tomato and a
couple of eggs. He has cut a chunk of bread. He has a small
flask of whiskey.
It is on the table in front of him. He drinks it with water
from a cup. There
is no ice, but it does not matter. The summer night outside
is cooler now
that the sun has set. There is a stillness, as if the heat
of the day has sunk deeply
into the ground. With dusk, a quieter, cooler drift of air
lifts the edge of the
curtain at the kitchen window.
Godfrey has left the stable door open. Through it, he
can see the ridge.
And now, in silhouette, undisguised by colour or by light,
the slight
protuberance of the two hills beyond, rising from the upland
plain.
He draws a map.
Here is the line of the empty river. He draws it with care.
He turns the
paper round and starts it from above, as if he is walking
down it,
remembering how it turned to the right, opening across even
ground and
then to the left, butting up against the start the krantz,
just beyond the
place where he and Grace had found the inala cow standing in
the shade at
the edge of the bush.
-I am the stones of the forest.
-I am the gaps between the branches of the trees
silhouetted against the sky.
-I am abundance.
Here is the krantz. He draws two lines, almost parallel, but
then
converging. He shades the place between them at their
greatest distance
from each other where the rockface is higher. Here is the
witgat tree, bark
white as bone, leaves small and dark, shrunk from lack of
water, growing on
a river bank where no water ever flows.
The sun had been hot. It was an unrelenting noon.
He had stood and looked about him, but Wilton Mayekiso
had walked
on, quite deft, just the slightest gesture of his hand,
directing him.
Godfrey had followed – a place of lizard-bush,
dry and
scaly, without
depth or shade. There is no moisture here.
Wilton had stopped, inclined his head, slowly in
silence, as if a sudden
movement might startle something into flight.
Godfrey had come forward, intent.
And there – on an angle of the rockface, very
slightly
sheltered from the
sun, no more than four or five inches tall, the image of a cow.
Faint. Delicate. Fragile. Her head turned back.
Beckoning.
An inala cow.
- Abundance: in white and ochre-red.
She had stood there a century or more. Not triumphant.
But deliberate.
Godfrey had stepped up to the rockface and gazed at
her, the slight toss
of her head, the poise of her hooves, the shimmer of her.
- She reminds me of you.
Had he said that, once, to Grace?
Oh, yes. He had said that.
Bibliography
1979. The Mantis and the Moon
1979. Nqalu, the Mouse with no Whiskers
1981. Once at Kwabufesi
1982. Shadow of the Wild Hare
1982. Marcus and the Go-Kart
1982. The Bush Strike
1983. The Woodash Stars
1984. Marcus and the Boxing Gloves
1987. Train to Doringbult
1993. Shades
1999. Iron Love
2003. Recessional for Grace
2003. The Abundant Herds
For more information please visit
KZN Literary
Tourism
|
|
