Today many people go to churches to find answers, to be closer to their creator, to seek for forgiveness, to seek light after death! Others embark on journeys to isangoma (traditional healers) to find answers about light before and after dark. The question all ask is what happens after light? Kobus Moolman takes us on journey to explore this question in his latest collection of poetry, Light and After, his fourth book collection of poetry. Light and After contains four sections: the first is Home, the second is Light, the third is entitled Anatomy and the fourth is called Anatomy. On reading this collection of poetry, the reader can find it unsettling, one of the characteristics of Moolman’s poems. The poems are not predictable at all; a paradoxical response is expected from the readers. This is the method Moolman uses to find out what happens after light, by offering his poetry as a gift. Being a Creative Writer lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Kobus Moolman takes the reader on a journey of life by giving us this well articulated piece of work. What can a reader expect to find? The first section, for example, defines the characteristics which make a house into a home and a reader can expect poems like The Door, Solution and my personal favorite Window. In this poem the window reveals its true colors when in conversation with its owner: “A large window that refuses to look at him. That treats him like a non-entity.” It is one of the many poems in this collection that a reader could find intriguing in the sense that it makes us see certain things which exist in our daily lives in a new way.
At the recent launch of the book, Sally-Ann Murray described the book Light and After as ‘stasis and movement’. The book will make its debut at this year’s 14th Poetry Festival hosted by the Centre for Creative Arts at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre on the 7th of October 2010. My overall impression of the anthology is that of meeting the unexpected.
