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  • Writer's pictureThe Red Wheelbarrow Poetry

The Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize 2021 Shortlist

Contact Art


Shari Daya


The first two days were bright and then

the fog rolled in across the bay

and there we were: gone, and just

the edge of the lagoon remained

but it stayed warm, so we stayed out,

shadows of ourselves, my littlest one

a watercolour blossom in his

pink and purple swimsuit, dancing

just as if the foghorn was not grieving

all the vessels lost before

today, their slow tilt into waves

then into sand, but also perhaps

some safely landed ships, like one

soaked into rock, red ochre sails,

at Porterville, three days away –

walking – from the sea, but in

the mountains there that galleon,

triple-masted, floats, three hundred

years since a fleeing artist ground

pigment from the earth, painted

what was coming, what was already there:

the strangers, arms akimbo, and what

she did not, could not, paint: invisibly

secreted in the blankets, alien life

snug and ready for their new adventure,

the smallest pioneers, the germs,

time on their side, and riding high

into the hinterland.


Note

150km north-east of Cape Town in the Skurweberg Mountains, near Porterville, there is a representation of a three-masted sailing ship painted in red ochre called the ‘Porterville Galleon’. The detailed depiction of the vessel suggests that the artist was visually familiar with European ships. Museum curators suggest that the ship dates to the mid-seventeenth century, coinciding with the sinking of the Nieuwe Haerlem and the ‘founding’ of Cape Town. (Text adapted from the British Museum website https://africanrockart.britishmuseum.org/thematic/contact-rock-art-south-africa/)This kind of work, depicting indigenous people’s encounters with colonisers, is often referred to as ‘contact art’.


SHARI DAYA is a geographer and poet from Cape Town. Her writing, both academic and imaginative, explores experiences of place, identity, and material cultures. Her poems have been published in New Contrast and the anthology Africa! My Africa! and her research has been published in a range of academic books and journals. Shari is currently undertaking an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town.

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