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The David Krut bookstore on Jan Smuts is an intimate setting, and the venue was full to overflowing when I attended on Saturday afternoon September 30 one of the bookstore’s Word Art at 151 events. This was the launch of Phillipa Yaa de Villiers’ volume “ice cream headache in my bone”. Keorapetse Kgositsile, Myesha Jenkins… Continue reading Two poetry readings, one country

I have received a volume of poems from my friend in Grahamstown, Harry Owen. It's called The Cull and I am frustrated that I cannot yet read it. I want to devote all my attention to it, and that is my excuse for not having reviewed it. I owe reviews to other poets as well,… Continue reading Apology

Sharing the thrill of chancing on a new poem that immediately and directly strikes home is one of the reasons I started this blog. So it is with a new slim volume of verse by Grahamstown poet Marike Beyers. I opened up the book at random and came across this: envy she admired most people… Continue reading New Poetry from Modjaji

Okay, so I promised to review South African poetry on this site. This is a tangent. I apologize. I fell in love with this verse from the Carmina Burana when I first read it many years ago. The Latin rhymes, the English version doesn't and is something of a transliteration, though it preserves the meaning well.… Continue reading A little love verse from the Middle Ages

Prunings by Helen Moffett, Uhlanga Press 2016 Western Cape academic, author, publisher, editor and, yes, poet Helen Moffett has produced one of the most intriguing and thought-provoking books of poetry I have come across, symbolic of the innovation of South Africa’s post-1994 wave of women poets. Don’t be misled by the title, Prunings, as I… Continue reading A review of Prunings, by Helen Moffett