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Thursday, December 31, 2020
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Gus Ferguson 1940-2020
I learnt via FB this morning that a high school friend of mine, aged 58, has dropped her body. Cancer. An excellent wake up call for me to take nothing for granted and to stop sweating the small stuff.
And then this evening I learnt that poet, publisher, illustrator, pharmacist and all round good guy and mensch Gus Ferguson has also departed these shores. I first encountered his poetry aged about 16, in 1980, when I bought his collection Snail Morning at the Market Theatre book shop. It was probably the first collection of poems I had ever purchased, and I bought it because
a) I'd read an article about him and
b) Some kids who knew his kids and him had moved to our school - (Fran Seftel you know who you are).
I loved the gentle whimsical poems ostensibly about snails, and the Quentin Blake-like illustrations Gus did himself. After a long hiatus, when I returned to South Africa around 1991, Gus regularly published my poems in the various poetry journals he brought out - Slugnews and Carapace being the two I remember. That he managed to keep Carapace running for as long as he did, on a shoestring budget, is testament to his creativity, determination, persistence and vision. He gave hundreds of wannabe and established poets a platform where the barriers to entry were somehow more permeable that those of New Coin and New Contrast and the other poetry journals that mostly folded after a couple of editions.
Gus also has (had?) a poetry imprint, Snailpress, which probably published more South African poets in the last thirty years than any other publisher. There is no money in poetry, and that he kept its doors open for as long as he did is again testament to his great love for poetry, and for nurturing and facilitating the creativity of others. Snailpress co-published both of my collections (Hidden and Revealed 2007, Ripening 2020) together with Marcia Leveson's Quartz Press. For this I remain deeply grateful to Gus.
His own poems were full of humour and kindness, self-deprecating wit and a profound reverence for the G-d of little things. He was a great lover of the small and humble, and wrote with a twinkle in his heart that ignited the same gentle wonder in the hearts of others. The last collection of his I have - his seventh - is titled "Dubious Delights - of ageing and other follies" and I share six of the delightful poems in it, by way of tribute to Gus Ferguson.
The first poem was prescient:
ALZHEIMER'S FREIGHT
Those things that you wish
to remember are not lost
or forgotten; but
packed up and sent on ahead
___________________________
PARADOX GAINED
I read all the classics. I studied the news.
I stared at my navel. I still had the blues.
I trudged in the mountains. I walked by the sea.
I carried a burden. The burden was me.
I put myself down and, with consumate ease,
I floated away in the afternoon breeze.
But who is this self that is free from all woe?
And what is the burden abandoned below?
These are the thoughts, and many such more
that trouble me now as I weightlessly soar
______________________
WHILE HIS WIFE IS AWAY
The house is quiet
because, perhaps
he isn't talking
Peelable fruits
are eaten first:
avocado, banana, pawpaw.
At room temperature
the stove is at its most
economical.
The grannies
in detergent ads
are suddenly sexy.
Its probably
projection but the goldfish
appear depressed.
He watches TV
the cats watch the dog
the dog watches him.
They eat together-
they crunch pellets
he crunches granola.
Preparing to cook
he absent-mindedly
eats the ingredients.
The phone rings.
He lurches -
it's only a poet.
In mute soliloquy
he prowls the house -
a bit like Hamlet.
_______________
And how could a Gus Ferguson sampler not have a poem or two about snails?
CHANSON
Along the Rue d'Escargot
we always travel very slow
When nights are long and lights are low
the sky's a lovely silver glow.
Along the Rue d'Escargot
we heave our heavy portmanteaux
that hold dark secrets none should know
and that is why we go so slow
along the Rue d'Escargot
____________
SNAIL
In your wake
the starlight glistens
listen how
the cosmos listens
_________________
And last, but not least Gus's simple acknowledgement of how we are all on the great wheel....what he refers to as Sam sara sara in another poem elsewhere in the same collection.
BLEAK MOMENT
They are all
dead or dying,
the parents of our friends.
And we,
inadequately trained
are bustled to the front
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