Peter Clarke, South African Artist and Poet 1929-2014

I was recently invited to a celebration of the life and times of Dr Peter Clarke, internationally renowned South African artist who came from Simon’s Town. The presentation was a conversation between Barbara Voss and Lionel Davis, close friend of the artist. Barbara Voss with Bridget Thompson are working on a publication on the art of the great man who grew up in Simon’s Town.

When I was a parish priest working in Simon Town I had the good fortune to meet Peter Clarke and to hear him read some of his poems published in Plain Furniture in 1991, to a group of young people in St Francis Church. I was also involved in raising money for the Peter Clarke stained glass windows for the church For St Francis Church. The latter is a long story – an agony and an ecstasy. In the next blog I shall present images of the windows.

Mary Kindo who helped to arrange the celebration in St Francis Church, asked me to read a few of Peter’s poems. So, I chose three of his poems, two of them which he had read when I was present and which I like. I present these to you in this blog and some of the master’s works sent to me by Mary Kindo.

The painting above is one of my favourites. It was painted during the apartheid era. Sandy Bay is a nudist beach on the Atlantic seaboard of the Cape Peninsula of Cape Town,South Africa. These bathers were probably breaking the law by simply being there.

Registering for School 1936

That first day

he watched

his mother and teacher-to-be

put together necessary information.

He stood waiting

listening to the way

his particulars were given

as if, even though there,

he were elsewhere or dead or dumb.

When they were done

he asked his mother, “Can we go home now?”

“No,” she said gently,

“You have to stay.”

She didn’t let him know

learning is a lifelong process

and on this journey

you’ve a long way to go

alone.

Peter Clarke had a very short career at school. The poet is remembering the first day at school when his mother left him there. Something he was not expecting. He was certainly not expecting to return again and again.

The first day at school is something most of us remember very clearly. For some it was a gladsome day, for others, myself included it was traumatic day.

I chose Beachcombing in which the poet talks about himself in the third person.
He is observing himself on the beach, searching for things that have been washed up by the waves, noticing the jetsam, the colours, the beauty, deciding how these processed and discarded things could be in an art- work, could become art.

In this poem we enter the mind of the artist at work.

In Peter’s later years he took great delight in creating collages, even books of artistic creations.
These often became gifts for his friends.

Beachcombing

Strolling on the littered beach

his was the eye that would search

for retrievable things,

above the tidal reach,

appealing to curiosity, childish ideas and taste.

Collecting, flotsam on the way,

thinking aloud, occasionally he’d say to us,

“I’ll take this and this. . . and that. . .”

He’d pick up driftwood to carve

or knock together.

Often he’d find a need for every piece,

fishbone, feather, plant and weed.

“It needn’t go to waste.”

He’d pick up bits of metal and later

flatten folds and creases

then cut and purposefully

put together different pieces

with carefully placed nails

and lengths of measured wire and wood.

So inventive,

able to improvise easily

he received his buddies’ admiration.

It was good to see

the ingenious way his mind functioned

and the slender hands give shape

to things.

Had later times been right,

would that he had tried

to reach the sky.

Mr Ramjee, shoe repairer: Simon’s Town

This familiarity,

fondness, love,

the way he cups the shoe

lodged in his embrace.

This is his life.

He adds and pares leather away

around the edge

carefully

with the razor-sharpness of his knife

to a purity of shape.

His is a slender muscled

involvement in his calling,

sleek hair combed back,

sometimes a thin forelock easily falling

on glasses lodged comfortably

on his nose,

his work trousers black

and shiny smooth beneath the labouring of years

and the stenches of assorted shoes

on the aproned-covering of his knees.

Somehow he is the central point between travelling

that cannot cease.

The individual character of the owner is retained

within the inner shaping of this footwear

year by year.

He cuts and glues and patches

and stitches with rosined twine

until the damaged areas disappear

and then the finished almost brand new shoes

are placed upon the shelf

to wait.

How strange the past,

the continuity of this elusive line,

an odyssey started

in some village in the sub-continent

where his anonymous Indian ancestors

patiently plied their trade

and lived and died,

never to know

the distances traversed,

or where unknown descendants of their caste,

daring, eager, unafraid,

would also go

or where this particular

Ramjee-shoe-repairer went.

Many of you will remember the shoemaker of old who occupied a garage or little shop in the suburbs of Cape Town. The person who kept one in shoes by making them last and last.
I remember short curly haired Mr.Leggat with spectacles on the edge of his nose and gravelly voice, who told Bible stories while he worked.
Shoes are about journeys -they accompany us on our way.
The poet wonders about the journey Mr Ramjee had made to be where he was, and indeed his ancestors would be surprised to discover that one of their descendants would have travelled so far to find a home.