Kobus Moolman

Kobus Moolman (born 1964) is a South African writer and academic. He has published ten volumes of poetry, plays for stage and radio, and a collection of short stories. He has won the Ingrid Jonker Prize, the South African Literary Award for poetry, and the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. He was runner-up for the BBC African Performance radio drama competition and has won two Performing Arts Network of South Africa (PANSA) awards. Quotes I think the clinical aspect that you so accurately identify has its origins in specific medical experiences [I have had], which reflect directly upon the collection as a whole. It is where the whole collection comes from in a way and speaks back to. This is both on a personal level historical, in the sense of being disabled since birth and having so many medical interventions over the years, and also recent, now, as someone who has to have monthly immunotherapy. So that’s the one side to the image. But as a writer the image must move beyond the purely personal. And thus while some poems in the book use the first-person singular – which of course, does not ever have to equate with the author – here there is in fact no speaker. On a certain level you could even say (and I like this idea) that the skin actually is the person or thing speaking, which then allows all skins – your skin, everyone’s skin – to speak. In all my work – whether poetry or plays or short stories – I have always believed in having compassion for my characters, compassion for the world, compassion for others. I am moved deeply by suffering: human, animal, environmental. And so even when I am writing a horrible, ugly, violent piece – like the poem “the earth is flat” or my short story “Kiss and the Brigadier” (both of which are also very funny) – even then I have to have compassion for the terrible characters and events, and even compassion for the language, which might be twisted and cruel, but nevertheless has to be honest and real. As a writer I have to have compassion for reality. External links Category:Living people