360º PERSPECTIVES | ISSUE 4 | 2015/2016
75
Book reviews
A Saving Bannister
P
rofessor Wendy Woodward released her third volume of poetry, A Saving Bannister, published by Modjadji Press in 2015. Prof Woodward, who retired in 2015, taught Southern African literature, Human Animal Studies and creative writing (poetry) in the English Department at the University of the Western Cape. The well-known poet has had her work appear in the English Academy Review, New Letters, Carapace, New Contrast, the Australian Animal Studies Journal and various anthologies. Her first collection of poetry was Séance for the body (Snailpress, 1994). Her second volume, Love, Hades and other Animals, appeared in 2008 (published by Protea). The third volume, edited by Fiona Zerbst,
appeared in 2015. The publisher’s blurb intriguingly describes the poems as “a journey into vulnerability and grace, across terrains inhabited by dogs, minotaurs and leviathans, by puppets and a failed Icarus.” UWC colleague, Meg Vandermerwe, wrote in a review comment, “Woodward’s poems are wise, beautiful cracks of thunder. They nourish hearts parched by the noise of modern life. They have the power to awaken us to ourselves and a natural world that teeters on a dangerous precipice. These are poems that can save lives.” Heaping praise too, poet Finuala Dowling wrote, “These beautiful poems, with their pellucid, stripped-down language, deep insights and the affinity they evince with animals both tame and wild, deserve the widest possible audience. Wendy Woodward is a South African Szymborska.” The title of the book echoes the famous poem ‘Some like poetry’ by Wislawa Szymborska, wherein the speaker muses about the meaning of poetry before concluding that, although not sure what it is, she holds “on to it, like a saving bannister”. Prof Woodward is recognised as one of the founders of animal studies in South Africa. Her current research focuses on practices of animal-reading in relation to embodiment, posthumanism and the figure of the outsider. One of her books, The Animal Gaze: Animal Subjectivities in southern African Narratives (Wits University Press, 2008) was awarded the Deputy Vice-Chancellor’s Book Award for 2006–2008. Prof Woodward convened annual transdisciplinary colloquia on Human Animal Studies at UWC from 2011 to 2015. She is now co-editing a collection of essays based on the 2015 Colloquium entitled Indigenous Creatures: Native Knowledges, Animals and Modernity.