sad...and beautiful place - the Stocki interview

LUKE MCAULEY: Stocki, “sad…and beautiful place” is an interesting book in that it is a collaboration of photography and poetry. Which is it? Photography or poetry?

STOCKI: A collaboration! But I’d say photography but if you interviewed Gordon he’d probably stress my poetry. But we collaborated on Eyes Open, Open Wide in 2004 which was to be a book of my poetry until I decided that it was time for the world to see my mate Gordon’s amazing photos, so like any good friend would I deceived him into putting photos in my book. So in some ways it was a poetry book with some good photos that were far too small on the page. From that moment on my idea for the next book was that it would be Gordon’s photos with my words small on the page. That cunning plan has worked a treat! The other part of the plan was to get him to Cape Town to capture the townships.

LUKE: So he went with you.

STOCKI: Yes, Gordon has been with us in both 2004 and 2006 and will be with us again this year. I was told once that when one of the moon walkers – not Michael Jackson – was asked what he would take if he went to the moon again and he said, “an artist!” That is profound. You need the artist to capture feel and sense of place. That is what Gordon’s photos have brought to our project. When people come and talk to Janice and I we always give them photo books of Cape Town but they always lack the real Cape Town of the townships. This book takes you in there and I think it is a rarity in its subject matter. 

LUKE: Gordon’s stuff is really good.

STOCKI: Oh he is the real deal. Gordon is a fireman by day and in our world where the academic is foolishly held in too much respect – a Greek idea, not a Biblical one – Gordon with few academic letters after his name is sometimes a little down on himself. I quickly saw genius in his photography. But he had no confidence so the first book was to build that. In the in between time the local photographic world both in education and in exhibit has given Gordon a lot of respect. He has won awards and been accepted for some major shows. It is now a real honour for me to be involved in a project with him.

LUKE: You’ve done some academic study yourself recently. Has that affected the book?

STOCKI. Yes, I think it has affected everything really. But my Masters study was to look at how art can transform and social transformation was a major part of that. So to see how a book like “sad… and beautiful place” can raise awareness, change attitudes etc is I guess a practical extension of the study. I came up with what I call prophetic stimulants that art needs to changed things – hope, re-humanising, unity of emotions, protest, carrying story or theology… - and many of these I think are evident in the book.

LUKE: The book is poems broken up around the photographs, maybe broken up line by line or verse by verse. Did you write all of these with the photographs on your desk beside you?

STOCKI: Town Without a Signpost was closest to that. I had that title in my mind since I first drove into Masiphumelele in 2002. “Masi” is in Sun Valley, about ten miles south of Cape Town heading towards Cape Point, and there is a major junction a few hundred yards from the township entrance. That there was no signpost at that junction disturbed me. It is a symbol of the way that white South Africa saw the 20,000 people of Masiphumelele. I think the book gives humanity back to these unremembered souls.

Anyway, that is the title. The verses is what I call real collaboration between Gordon and I. We drove our bus around Wallacedene in 2006 and as Gordon took photos, some of which appear through this poem – the washing line on the brittle shack roof and the bell in the little shop grill – I was jotting down lines for a poem. They were painting on stop signs and Coldplay was blasting out of a shack. Where in the privacy obsession of the money loving west we ask the neighbours to turn their music down I sense that in townships they ask them to turn it up as they share radios. This is the one poem that was then finished looking at the photos.

Blessed Are The Poor Part 2 was written as Gordon took photos. We were on a cemetery in Nyanga in 2004, as Gordon was doing cemeteries at the time, and I jotted down stuff as Gordon snapped. I actually finished it in Vancouver a year later flicking through some of the photos. Gordon has taken a shot of crows sitting on barb wire and that image became important.

Sindy is an interesting one too. We were visiting people affected by HIV/AIDS through the ministry of JL Zwane Memorial Church in Guguletu. We were broken into groups to visit. Gordon went with the four groups hence the four photographs. I visited Sindy who had posters of pop stars on the wall. This grabbed the attention of my poetic mind and they featured in Gordon’s snapshot. I liked that; two artists in different disciplines picking up the same things and bringing them together.

Elsewhere it was looking through my poems and seeing where I felt they said something similar to the photographs. In A Tiny Township House is actually written in Natal where my wife worked in 1993. I was actually only going to use only the last four lines but at graphic design stage the photos got moved around and Gordon suggested putting it all in. He was right and I like some lines in that poem. Where There Are People was actually written for a Brian Houston album cover way back but breaking those lines up seemed to go with the photos so well.

And then of course we used some of my dairy from 2006 as prose too. So a variety of ways.

LUKE: Did the project constrain your writing particularly on Town Without a Signpost?

STOCKI: Well, it is certainly a different way to write though I’d love to do it again. Yes, it is slightly confining but then having a photograph that says so much more than any of my rhyming couplets could ever say opens it up more than most poets got the chance to do! And I wouldn’t call myself a poet. More a rhyming pop preacher!

LUKE: Well, the book is a treat and I hope it sells loads.

STOCKI: Me too, all proceeds to Capetownship our Chaplaincy project that takes 50 students to Cape Town this summer to give very practical hope in the townships that Gordon has captured so well but then to come back with hope that they can make the rest of their lives justice orientated. 

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