15+ questions for Diana Ferrus

1. Describe yourself in a hashtag.

#inhaarstem / #inhervoice

2. What do you listen to in your car or when you are alone?

I have a wide-ranging musical taste. I listen to classical music, folk/rock, jazz and any good music that touches my heart, or words, lines or instruments in a song that touch me.

3. What are you reading? 

I am rereading Chinua Achebe's There Was a Country. 

4. Which book would you recommend to everyone?

There Was a Country – a piece of Nigeria's history I was not aware of, and filled with lessons.

5. Your favourite South African writers?

There are too many to mention and new authors are constantly coming onto the scene; the South African literary market is experiencing a boom. There is, for example, Gaireyah Fredericks with her book Een voet innie kabr (One Foot in the Grave), an intimate look into a Muslim life, in Muslim Afrikaans. And I still have to read Barbara Boswell's The Comrade's Wife.

6. And poets?

Oh, there are many, Antjie Krog, Clinton V du Plessis, Ronelda Kamfer, the Mengelmoes Poets, Nathan Trantraal, Pieter Odendaal, Lynthia Julius and many others. (Also read “The protest poet who loves to perform".)

7. What would you want to redo?

Nothing, really. What I did wrong, I learned so much from.  

8. High point in your life?

The recognitions I have received, among others my “freedom of the town" from the Breede Valley Municipality, the Mbokodo Award for poetry in 2012 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Stellenbosch. 

9. Do you have any hobbies?

I like to write, read (which gets harder as I get older), listen to music, walk in nature, tell stories.

10. What do you find sexy?

Men and women who are intelligent, not conceited, who can talk about anything and are in touch with their feelings.

11. What is your emotional age?

I don't really know how to answer this but I think I'm 50 even though I turned 71 on August 29. I am friends with people from all over the spectrum, people in their thirties to people in their eighties.

12. Is there an older woman who has had a great influence on your life? 

In grade 11 (standard 9) I had a teacher who treated my especially well and increased my self-confidence. She brought out the best in me. I talk about her in my autobiography. Those who want to know what her name is should buy my autobiography.

13. Your most disastrous holiday?

I was about 15/16 and was asked to go on holiday with relatives. My whole vacation was being a babysitter! And nothing came of the boys who looked at me so attractively.  

14. What else do you want to achieve or do?

I want to do a production where there are artworks on the walls, the poet reading and dancers on stage with her. I am now telling the story of Sarah Baartman in “Eendag lank gelede" [Once Upon a Time]. I  would love to do more stories this way.

I want to write more children's books. I wrote about [the coloured dance pioneer] Johaar Mosaval in The Boy Who Loved to Dance. The book will be published in October by New Africa Books.

15. Is there someone you would like to work with? 

There are a lot of people I want to collaborate with, musicians, opera singers, dancers and other poets. Coenie de Villiers once said that if I want to collaborate I just have to tell him.   

16. What were you like as a child?

Childhood years were not easy. I write in my autobiography that even on Thursdays I was afraid of what Friday and the weekend would bring. Drink was so freely available in my hometown because it was surrounded by wine farms. I was old before my time. I spoke out of turn many times. Gossiped about my parents with my maternal grandmother. I caused so much “trouble". So, my parents were proud of my achievements at school but wary of the slimbek (smart mouth).

17. What was your favourite school subject?

Funnily enough, maths up to standard seven. Then I had to go to another class and that teacher didn't like it that my ex-teacher was bragging about me like that. My old class was a bit behind and the new teacher didn't help bring me up to standard. And then I fell behind…  But I still did accounting and finished as one of the best. 

18. What did you want to be one day?

I said many things. Doctor, teacher, writer, actress – but couldn't really dream beyond the reach of teacher, nurse, prison warden or typist. 

19. How did you become a writer?

My mother and father always “performed" poems for us. My love developed there. And also, both of them were readers. We regularly read newspapers, and one day the pictures of a train accident touched me so deeply that I wrote a poem about it. My family thought it was beautiful. And that's when the bug bit me. Never stopped writing. My first short story, “Die kind”, was published in 1994 by Antjie Krog in Die Suid-Afrikaan.

20. Your celebrity crush?

Joni Mitchell!

21. Your superpower?

My mother, Ann Ferrus.

22. Your hero?

Nelson Mandela.

23. What do you look forward to?

The disappearance of poverty from society and with it all the social ills such as drug addiction, alcoholism, violent crime against children and women, and racism. Equality! 

24.Your five favourite Afrikaans songs?

Sonvanger, Kinders van die Wind, Skadu’s teen die muur, Hillbrow, Pelgrimsgebed.

♦ VWB ♦

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