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Article: Railway Poetry.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- World Literature Today
- Article date:
- January 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 University of Oklahoma. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Zolani Mkiva, ed. Scottsville, South Africa University of Natal Press (ISBS, distr.). 2000 63 pages. $12.95. ISBN 0-86980-989-X
IT IS NOT EASY to know what we are to make of Railway Poetry. The project is sponsored by an organization called Spoornet, but neither the significance of this fact nor the purpose of the book is adequately stated either in the "Acknowledgements" section or in a largely uninformative foreword by the Spoornet chairman. The anthology is "presented by Zolani Mkiva, Poet of the Nation," who, we are told on the back cover, is "one of the youngest practitioners of one of the oldest oral traditions in South Africa, the imbongi, or praise poet." ...