Binding grammar to horror: considering trauma in the poetry of Ingrid de Kok, Alicia Partnoy and Mongane Wally Serote

Abstract

This article argues that it is possible to capture the nuances of traumatic experiences through the medium of poetry, rather than through fiction alone. Because of its ability to be elliptic, its reliance on symbolism and especially syntactic interruptions, poetry can be an effective medium by which trauma is examined, especially in the postcolonial context. Studies have indicated that poetry is effective when used as therapy, that is when victims of traumatic experiences are encouraged to write the trauma out of themselves. Journals such as Traumatology and Journal of poetry therapy attest to the fact that poetry is a credible medium and can be effective as an aid to healing. The article explores the poetry of Ingrid de Kok, Alicia Partnoy and Mongane Wally Serote, who reflect on and write haunting poems showing the multifaceted perspectives on traumatic experiences in South Africa and Argentina. Trauma studies, an area of cultural investigation that came to prominence in the early to mid-1990s, prides itself on its explicit commitment to ethics and can with justification be regarded as the reinvention in an ethical guise of the much-maligned textualism (Craps and Buelen 2008). It is to this end that the article, using the prism of trauma, undertakes a close reading of the poets' impassioned poetry and concludes that trauma, when examined through poetry, is as ethical as literature hopes to be.