written March 1960
the child
This is the poem quoted by President Mandela at the inauguration of the first Democratic Parliament in South Africa:
- “The time will come when our nation will honour the memory of those who gave us the right to assert with pride that we are South Africans, that we are Africans and citizens of the world. The certainties that come with age tell me that among these we shall find an Afrikaner woman… Her name is Ingrid Jonker.”
And he read: “The Child who was shot at Nyanga”:
- The child is not
date unknown
bitterbessie dagbreek
Ingrid wrote everywhere, usually scraps of paper that she casually disposed off... When Jack worried that she might lose her poems that way she laughed: “No matter, I have them all here...(pointing to her head)”. She did have a prodigious memory and remembered all her poems, but the lack of careful records makes it very difficult to date some of her poems.
In Bitterbessie Dagbreek Ingrid captures the Coloured’s way of speaking - something not done at the time and frowned upon by the
date unknown
lied van die lapop -
song of the little rag doll
In “A Doll’s House” Nora can no longer be happy with just being a daughter and a wife, she needs to know who she is besides being her father’s child and her husband’s pet...at the end of two hours Ibsen finally lets her break free to start the journey of self-discovery.
Ingrid’s poem echoes Nora’s quest with a bittersweet irony and captures her predicament with a force that is pure Jonker...
date unknown
escape
Ingrid was still a minor when her father had her committed to Valkenberg, a mental hospital in Cape Town. Here she predicted her death with uncanny accuracy:
“My body lies washed up in grass and wrack
Wherever memory shall call us back”
A Poet is by definition someone capable of the deepest feelings and the greatest insight, to light the darkness of our existence. That her body should have washed up among the debris on the beach is a portrait of our time...
date unknown
puberteit - puberty
This is a poem from Ingrid’s teenage years and a very significant one because it posed a question that she would repeat throughout her life:
-Did you kill the child in me?
Her whole life can be seen as an answer to this question.
These are home recordings of Ingrid reading her poetry into Jack’s tape recorder, from Helena Nogueira’s “Ingrid Jonker: Her Lives & Time”.
Jack Cope, pictured here with Ingrid the day she sailed to Europe, was Ingrid’s mentor and the great love of her life.
