New Shades, by Chris Mann (used)

Chris Zithulele Mann was born in Port Elizabeth in 1948. After university in South Africa and Britain, he lived and taught in a Swaziland village before moving to Grahamstown where he worked in the English Department of Rhodes University. While in Grahamstown he was a member of

Izinkonjane Zase Rhini, a band which performed various types of township and traditional music locally and which was broadcast by Radio Xhosa. He is at present working for a medical and agricultural project in the Valley of a Thousand Hills outside Durban.

Chris Mann's first book of verse, First Poems, was published in 1977, and he was joint editor with Guy Butler of A New Book of South African Verse in English, published in 1979. His verse play, The Sand Labyrinth, was performed as part of the National Student Drama Festival in Grahams-town in 1980.

Politics, sport, religion, love, violence - many of the issues that affect South Africans are to be found in this second volume of verse by Chris Mann. The issues, however, are viewed from a fresh perspective, for he draws on both European and African traditions of thought. Several poems, for example, express a belief in the shades (from amadlozi- Zulu, and izinyanya - Xhosa). It is no exaggeration to say that in both rural and urban areas of this subcontinent the concept of the ancestral spirits or shades continues to dominate. Several other poems reflect the author's study of African oral literature, and his concern to write - and perform - poems which are accessible to the ear.

condition: good (cover worn)