Return of the Moon: Versions from the /Xam by Stephen Watson
The origin of these poems is an extensive ethnographic record known as the Bleek and Lloyd collection, a testimony of folklore, songs and stories that formed part of the /Xam oral tradition (the /Xam being one linguistic group of the Bushman people who lived in Southern Africa in the nineteenth century)
The origin of these poems is an extensive ethnographic record known as the Bleek and Lloyd collection, a testimony of folklore, songs and stories that formed part of the /Xam oral tradition (the /Xam being one linguistic group of the Bushman people who lived in Southern Africa in the nineteenth century)
The testimony was narrated by three men, //Kabbo, /Han≠kasso and Dia!kwain, and transcribed by Dr W H Bleek and Lucy Lloyd in the 1870s. Watson ‘re-cast’ excerpts from this testimony into poetry, a complex process he recounts in his original publication, Return of the Moon: versions from the /Xam.
Please click on the link above to read the poems.
