In rehearsals this week as ‘A President in Waiting …’ will be performed at the Masambe Theatre, Baxter, Cape Town on Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th March at 2.00pm. This is part of the Zabalaza Festival and the play has got through from the mini-festival where the the woman show was performed in the township of Langa last month.
Two of my poems from my collection ‘Red Lipstick and Revelations’ has been published by Lunar Poets: ‘The Undressing’ and ‘Scent for You …’ The theme is Leaving and the link to buy a copy is: https://lunarpoetryblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/lunar-poetry-8-no-really/
There are two places left on Creative Ink’s Tuesday ‘Get Inspired’ course beginning April 19th for five weeks and a few more places left on the Thursday ‘Get that Book Out of You’ course beginning April 21st for five weeks. Email me for a syllabus.

First Kiss, Last Breath … Jan Moran Neil

Sunny morning,
seven fourteen … precise,
term-time schoolboy
snakes her hedge,
strides her path,
heartbeats change pace,
posting oh so delicate
and eternal message
– Be mine, Valentine –
– For his future she will be forgotten,
– but for now –
sixteen kisses, a coach to catch,
chemistry coursework in his bag,
chemistry radical in his heart.

Just as
red rose intentions
fall to the floor
– a dog barks
and

a million miles away
on his miscellaneous day
a heartbeat slows,
amaryllis dies,
seven fourteen … precise.

A door opens …
warm lips meet …
a bird of passage streaks the sky

a phone rings.

For Muriel – 14/2/2001

The Ulutsha Theatre Company
presents
A President in Waiting…
Written by Jan Moran Neil
with Khuls Nkatshu as Khululwa

Khululwa has a question for Madiba …

Creative Ink and Desmond Tutu HIV Youth Foundation Centre Collaboration.

Zabalaza Mini-Festival,
– Saturday 6th February, 2016,
Guga S’thebe, Langa, Cape Town, 2016.

Creative Ink for Writers’ Summer Term commences Tuesday 19th April (Get Inspired) for 5 weeks and Thursday 21st April (Get that Book Out of You) for 5 weeks at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield. Email me for a syllabus.

Here is the link to a little tanka about a hyena which I wrote and is published in Zoomorphic: a lovely wildlife magazine. Details below:

Zoomorphic Issue 4 published!

View this email in your browser
(http://us11.campaign-archive1.com/?u=5c95d2506dad66cabec85d9e2&id=e0e33e6d42&e=f5c47924b9)

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WELCOME TO ZOOMORPHIC ISSUE 4
————————————————————
In this first issue of 2016 we are curating essays, fiction and poetry from the USA,
UK and Australia.

Essays by Gavin Van Horn, Paula Peeters, Tom Leskiw and James Roberts.
Short pieces by Richard LeBlond and Dawn Paul.
Poetry by Giles Goodland, Anna Cathenka, Bill Cushing, David J Costello, Jan Moran
Neil, Jenifer DeBellis, Joan Lennon, Karen Terrey, Linnea Harper, Michael Murray,
Seth Crooke and Susan Defreitas.

Essay and short story subjects include: The Bush Stone Curlews of Australia; the
Black-crowned Night Herons of Chicago; the precarious mating locations of the Spade
Foot Toad; Mute Swans in upland Wales; Rattlesnakes negotiating built-over ancient
territories and migratory hotspots in the the Whetstone Mountains of Arizona.

New poems describe the gannets of Stac an Armin; trapped hummingbirds; elephant
retirees;
the dreams of alpha wolves, the wanderings of the humble ant and more . . .

Thank you again to everyone who has contributed to this issue. We are delighted to
be hosting your work.

Change by Ms Paige Turner

Happy New Year, Creative Inkers. Here’s to our new term/Tuesdays with the theme of Change and Thursdays with our Cracking Characters and Pimple Popping Plots.

letters from:
metamorphoses

same term
same seat
same perm
same state
same room
same rote poem
same rote prose
it saps me
so stop

metamorphose

by Jan Moran Neil. First published in her anthology: ‘Serving Bluebird Pie’.

This morning I heard that the lovely lady and writer, Pamela Parham died last October 6th. She took a seat in my classes in 1997 until ill health prevented her attendance a couple of years ago. God bless her and her prolific words.

Email me if you would like a Creative Ink seat this term.

Other People’s Missives – Blog 127 – Ms Paige Turner
Here’s some words from Catherine Klyhn who organises such wonderful writing workshops through the year:
Eleven women wrote 55 poems, memoirs and the beginnings of short stories during the Secrets & Lies writing workshop last week! Not bad for two hours work the week before Christmas and fuelled by a fair amount of fizz! Thank you Jan Moran Neil for a relaxed but highly productive evening and to the wonderful women who took time out to create such amazing energy. Looking forward to the next one!

And here’s what Lucy Skelton wrote for Lies. Love it.
1. Go to sleep or Father Christmas won’t come.

2. Sprouts ARE fine.

3. Granny’s not a racist – she’s just had too much sherry.

Happy Christmas to all UK, USA and SA (Fish Hoek Scribblers) writers.

There’s one place left on Creative Ink’s Tuesday ‘Get Inspired’ course starting January 12th for five weeks and a few more places left on the Thursday ‘Get that Book Out of You’ course starting January 14th for five weeks. Email me for a syllabus.

A Dream in Waiting …. Blog 126 by Ms Paige Turner.

Last sunny Monday I ran though the lines of my fifth play ‘A President in Waiting …’ with the actress who performed the one woman show last November 2014 at the Desmond Tutu HIV Youth Foundation Centre in Cape Town. It was important that we met that day as Mister Justin Case and I were due to fly back to UK last Tuesday.
Khuls had an audition lined up last Friday at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town. The Zabalaza Festival is taking place at the Baxter in March and the theatre is on the lookout for one or two handed plays which is saying something new and innovating about South Africa. We feel we are saying something about the future of female black domestic workers. It seemed an ideal opportunity.
However, since performing the play in November 2014, Khuls had left her home township of Masiphumelele in Cape Town to seek work in Johannesburg some 1400 kilometres away.
Once her audition slot was confirmed Khuls travelled by minibus taxi from Johannesburg to Cape Town on a Sunday. It took her eighteen hours. She texted me from Cape Town and said due to Monday morning traffic she might be a little late for rehearsal and could she get back to her home township for a shower first.
Khuls arrived at my home in Fish Hoek and she was pretty well line perfect. She was pretty well tired. She got to that audition at the Baxter Theatre last Friday and the upshot is, we are through to the next round.
Khuls will be performing A President in Waiting … on February 2nd in the township of Nyanga. We will have to see if we arrive at her dream: a performance at the Baxter Theatre in March.
It’s good to have dreams.

There’s one place left on Creative Ink’s Tuesday ‘Get Inspired’ course starting January 12th for five weeks and a few more places left on the Thursday ‘Get that Book Out of You’ course starting January 14th for five weeks. Email me for a syllabus.

‘A President in Waiting …’ was broadcast on Cape Town TV on Monday 9th November with more broadcasts due.

White Rhino in Winter

And suddenly … clamped on road side,
zooless – but ours for the viewing,
prehistoric pedestrian – pavement slab for hide,
blank blinkers stare seemingly – at nothing.

Handicapped horn bent towards winter earth,
the haunting whisper of captivated guide,
“She carried two calves for fourteen months,
– she lost them last week to a pride.”

Mother’s eyes on sun drenched winter evening.
Weighted monument in mourning.

Jan Moran Neil – World Wide Writers Prize Giving Anthology and also published in Gill Hartley’s ‘Aspects of Loss’ available on Amazon.

With Rhinos on my mind. Having seen truck loads of white rhino and two black rhino in Kruger National Park last week courtesy of the mighty ranger: Jacob at Jock Safari Lodge. Seeing this man shift a ton of stubborn rhino on the road with care, skill and quiet authority is a poem I have in the making. So watch this space and email me if you would like more info’ on Creative Ink classes starting in January/Tuesdays/ Get Inspired and Thursdays/Get that Book Out of You – both running for five weeks at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield.

Tusk, Tusk.

I reside in a room just ten by ten:
a living room where they never see me.
Though I am largely there it’s not just men
who choose to ignore what isn’t pretty.
My hide is a hundred; no guarantee
that things unsaid in my well rutted trunk
won’t be wine whispered when women are drunk.
I’m the ivory, unseen lock keeper;
the weight that sits and can never be sunk;
the contained past; the water-logged future …

Email me for Creative Ink for Writers’ spring term classes starting in January.

Blog 123 – Publications News by Ms Paige Turner

Two publications are available.
I was honoured to read at Oxford University’s International Poetry Competition Prize Giving last week. My Petrarchan sonnet ‘Birds in the Hand’ – a tribute to black female domestics in South Africa – was commended in their Four Corners competition judged by Mimi Khalvati. The anthology is available on www.stx.ox.ac.uk
The 2016 Rhyme & Reason diary is now available on www.renniegrove.org My poem ‘God and Dolly Pop’ – also a tribute to black female domestics in South Africa – is commended and is February.
Tuesday (Get Inspired) – 3 places left – and Thursday (Get that Book Out of You) Creative Ink courses begin Tuesday 12th January and Thursday 14th January 2016 at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield. Five week courses. 10.00 am until midday.
£160 to include up to 3000 word assessment and coffee and biscuits. Email me for an enrolment form and syllabus.
Creative Ink News
Michelle Gunner has just published her novel An Orchid in Winter with Electric Reads
and this is available on Amazon.
Di Latham has now sold over 1000 copies of her re-creative non-fiction book: Walking Forward, Looking Back published by Troubador and available on Amazon.
I have my Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. All done!