Roy Joseph Cotton – September 11, '53 – March 10, '85

Roy commenced writing poetry during his latter school years. He read prolifically and was passionate about music and was a devote to Bob Dylan. He wrote many plays or "Musical Paintings" as he called them, and was also busy with two works "Multimythicum" and "Girlpools, Whirpools, and other gusts of Twirling Hair". He wrote from the security of a warm, close family in a comfortable Cape Town (South Africa) suburb. Yet most of his huge output of poems reflect a consuming angst. It was an angst which drove him to search for peace throughout books, music, writing, and religion, and it led to ultimate despair. His highly idiosyncratic way with language and the intense pressure of his emotional and spiritual concerns make his poetry compelling and disturbing reading. His untimely death at age of 31 cut short his promising career as a poet.

ELSIES RIVER ROBOT EVENING SCENE

Shadowhunched in the
apricot glare, dimpled
and dun; the black news-
hawker looks like an
exhausted bear’s paw.

All those newspaper
stacks seem to exhale
more than the headlined folly
of fulsome news.

And the voortrekker road
delirium slippered in dust;
what seems to be the neon
famine of evening meat.

Then the flow of metallic
painted motion is ducoed
with the rim of a changing
silent street.