Into the Day Breaking

Joan Metelerkamp has perfected a voice which weaves its repetitions and hesitations into a powerful tool, revealing how love and illumination have to be struggled for in daily routine and tedium. Into the day breaking describes a domestic world face to face with the dry contours and harsh economics of a small sawmill community in the southern Cape, and traces those not always visible connections that tie us to each other and to the earth. Metelerkamp is always meticulous in her search for the exact word and image to serve her quest for a new language: I say to chattering consciousness: walk; take your body through pines on pale clay leave me to look up at the mountains the bush, the blue - I say to the willing mind move over, move let me be - I am waiting for something like some Word, some words, to take me -