In Gode van Papier poog die digter om gestalte te gee aan die moderne mens se gode: gode (ook buite die tradisionele sin van die woord) met voete van klei wat op hul plek gesit en gehou word.

Hoewel die woord "gode" dikwels in die bundel gebruik word, dui dit baie keer nie op gode in die tradisionele sin van die woord nie.

Allerlei dinge, tot die gedigte self, word gode in hierdie bundel.

"Stephen Symons’s poetry enters a realm of tenderness, the quiet embrace of nature, and the frailties of the human spirit from which beauty arises. I hold his poetry in the highest regard. He is a masterful image maker and a believer in the power of close looking. This poet is a gem."

– David Keplinger, author of Another City and The Long Answer: New and Selected Poems

Jerzy Koch, vertaler, digter, akademikus, is hoof van die Afdeling Nederlandse en Suid-Afrikaanse Studies by die Fakulteit Engels van A. Mickiewicz-Universiteit in Poznań. Hy doseer veral Nederlandse literatuur, koloniale literatuur en Afrikaans. Hy is ook die skrywer van ’n omvattende literatuurgeskiedenis oor Afrikaans. Hy besoek Suid-Afrika gereeld sedert 1992 en het die Afrikaanse taal sodanig sy eie gemaak dat hy dit vlot praat en gedigte daarin skryf.

Hy het werke vertaal van H. Claus, J. Bernlef, H. de Coninck, S. Hertmans, G. Kouwenaar, Lucebert, H. Mulisch, Multatuli, L. Nolens, P. Rodenko, F. Timmermans e.a. Vir sy vertaal-oeuvre het hy in die Lae Lande die M. Nijhoff-prys ontvang. Hy het ook Ingrid Jonker (1993) vertaal en sy onlangse vertalings in Poolse is bloemlesings uit Antjie Krog (2017) en Breyten Breytenbach (2018) se gedigte.

In sy digbundel Pleks van plaas skryf hy onder meer oor sy familiegeskiedenis in Pole, maar die grootste deel van die bundel word in beslag geneem deur verse oor Suid-Afrika. Indrukwekkend is veral die seegedigte. Dit is nie net die branders wat sy “oor vang en oorrompel” nie, maar ook die Afrikaanse taal.

Emma Bekker se debuutpundel Skryn (poësie) is goed ontvang en die eerste druk het uitverkoop. Hierdie bundel kortverhale getuig van dieselfde fyn waarneming, musikaliteit, verbeeldingrykeid en sensualiteit. Dit gaan hier oor struktuur, oor lae van betekenis en gevoel, oor die skelette van stories wat met vel oorgetrek word. Die verhale is soms donker, soms humoristies, altyd vreesloos en eroties gelaai. Die onderwerpe strek van ’n porn-ster se hartseer oor sy ma se dood tot ’n uitbundige relaas van ’n skoolkonsert.

In Mede-wete,’n aangrypende nuwe digbundel deur Antjie Krog, word temas soos taal, geheue en gewete met ’n nuwe intensiteit en beleënheid hanteer. Dit is haar eerste digbundel in 8 jaar.

Dié gedigte laat blyk duidelik haar diep verknogtheid aan haar geboortegrond en haar volgehoue betrokkenheid by en passie vir die land se komplekse geskiedenis en samelewing. Terselfdertyd herdefinieer sy haar identiteit as Afrikaanse digter. Te midde van verse waaruit haar woede en afkeer ten opsigte van sosiale ongeregtighede spreek, is daar ook boeiende familieverse, verse oor die generasies vorentoe en terug waarin die stemme en gesprekke opklink wat ons elke dag hoor. Ook verse oor oudword en afskeid, waarvan die huldigingsvers vir Mandela ’n hoogtepunt is.

Maar dit is verál weens die ontwrigting van taal juis om nuwe betekenis te skep dat Antjie Krog ’n opwindende digbundel lewer.

Poetic Inquiry for the Social and Human Sciences: Voices from the South and North enriches human and social science research by introducing new voices, insights, and epistemologies.

Poetic inquiry, or poetry as research, is a literary and performance arts-based approach. It combines the arts and humanities with scientific inquiry to enhance social research. By challenging conventional epistemological traditions that assert a detached stance of the known from the knower, poetic inquiry proposes a method of decolonising knowledge production. This book expands on ground-breaking work done in the Global North on transdisciplinary poetic inquiry scholarship by bringing it into conversation with knowledge from the Global South. It allows for South-North leadership and places unique scholarly contributions from the South at the centre of transnational discussions.

In exploring and advancing poetic inquiry in the Global South, part of the book’s decolonising agenda is to challenge and expand the definition of poetic inquiry and recognise the contributions from diverse traditions and social practices. The peer-reviewed chapters are written by new and established scholars in various knowledge fields worldwide. The chapters’ scholarly contributions are complemented by an original poetry sequence interwoven through the book. Critically, Voices and Silences shows how poetry can engender innovative research that addresses pressing social justice issues, such as inclusion and decolonisation.

Poetic Inquiry will interest researchers and academics who seek to advance social research by adopting new epistemologies and approaches that integrate the value of the Global South’s contributions and foster expanded South-North collaborations.

These poems trace Nelson Mandela's journey to freedom.

The original French and Norman Strike's sensitive English translations are printed on opposite pages, interspersed with ink drawings by Nja Madhaoui.

By highlighting and teasing out the mingled emotions of anxiety, disenchantment, hope and anger which characterise South Africans’ current experienced reality, Sole’s poetry questions and expands on our concerns about identity and belonging.

In so doing, the poems in Skin Rafts contemplate the relationships that exist between us on a number of seemingly discrete, but actually intertwined, fronts – the personal relationship between lovers; the wider social and political relationships between human beings; as well as the problematic and contested human relationships that are brought to bear on land, landscape and the non-human.

In this collection the reader is confronted with the circumstance that both body and society exist in a fragile dimension of uncertainty, where we all are ‘bobbing / on our raft of skin’.

Die langverwagte vierde bundel uit die pen van die bekroonde digter Danie Marais. Soos in sy vorige bundels is dit gedigte wat openhartige, intieme gesprekke met die leser aanknoop – hierdie keer oor die ongemakke van ras en klas.

Dis ’n bundel oor die menslike middelklastoestand en die unbearable whiteness of being wat waag om te praat oor die dinge waaroor mense liefs stilbly in die woonbuurte van Stellenbosch waar ’n koue burgeroorlog stil in die boomryke strate woed.

This book is not just for the romantics among us; because what are we here for, if not to love?

A book for the passionate and warm-hearted among us, LOVE explores every type of affection and helps us to nurture our most precious connections. This collection invites us to keep space open for the love in our lives and to remember that it can be found in the most unexpected places.

From familial ties to friendship and romantic love, these poems show tenderness as a powerful force - even towards yourself.

Basil du Toit draws on his childhood years in Botswana (the Bechuanaland Protectorate, as it was in those days) to examine questions of language identity and entitlement. He recalls confiding the secret of a magic trick to an itinerant Tswana man who in exchange taught him how to say a few words of the / Xam language; this proximity of language to the magical fashioning of reality still haunts him and has led to poems questioning our sense of belonging to social structures, sexual groupings and even to humanity itself.

Paradoxically, a diverse ethnic background (with Dutch, French, German and Scottish forebears) works against Du Toit’s sense of being welcomed into any single national group. Two directions of trans-national entitlement remain open – movement into an inner landscape of spiritual and artistic values, and an allegiance to the planet as an ecologically neutral, valued and threatened space of dwelling. Both of these manifestations of “home” feature prominently in Du Toit’s work. A visionary linguistics binds these worlds together – foregrounding of the inner life as a source of values and home encourages a Kantian vision of a natural world created by the necessary structures of human consciousness, language being the force and locus of this creation.

Du Toit’s longed-for release from paid employment in 2011 allowed him to spend his mornings in Edinburgh University’s Main Library; there, over the next ten years, basing himself on the Third Floor of the library (where the University’s literature collections are housed), he composed a large body of poems, mainly free-verse sonnets, from which the poems of “Studies in Khoisan Verbs” are drawn.

Fisika, die metafisiese, en selfs wetenskapfiksie word verweef in Nou in infrarooi. Soos die titel suggereer, gaan dit hier oor dit wat sigbaar is versus dit wat nié deur blote sig waarneembaar is nie.

Bestaande plekke – sommige naby en ander ver – word taktiel en ewokatief in reisgedigte uitgebeeld. Hiermee saam hang die verkenning van die onsigbare: van identiteit, ’n soeke na waar jy hoort, weemoed en liefde.

’n Debuutbundel wat bekroonde skrywer Tom Dreyer onomwonde as digter vestig.

Nadat Moessorgski na ’n uitstalling van skilderye van sy gestorwe vriend Viktor Hartmann gegaan het, het hy in 1874 ’n klavierwerk geskryf wat in 1922 deur Ravel georkestreer is en as gevolg van die orkesweergawe beroemd geword het. Philip de Vos het met sy verse die werk gemoderniseer om dit meer toegangklik vir moderne lesers te maak, terwyl dit steeds die gevoel van hierdie klassieke meesterwerk behou. Die prettige en slim Prente by ’n uitstalling beeld die besoeker uit soos hy van die een skildery na die volgende beweeg.

If a Shakespearean actor, a Christian missionary and an isiXhosa praise poet walked into a bar, their conversation would sound something like the poems in this collection.

Siphokazi Jonas is a weaver of seemingly discordant worlds; growing up in an Afrikaans dorpie during the transition years of a newly democratic South Africa and going on annual holidays to a village made this a necessity. Her work as a spoken word poet often fuses poetry, theatre and film, and she brings this genre-mixing to the page by using the intsomi form to weave the narrative of her poems together.

Jonas’s poems explore the impact of linguistic and cultural alienation as a black learner in former Model C schools in the 1990s and early 2000s. She is not only a referee of the internal war between isiXhosa and English within her, but she pieces together a language for leaving and returning between the past and the present, and a possible future. Her poems ask questions about navigating tradition, religion, migration between rural and urban spaces, and how families choose to make their own culture. Weeping Becomes a River is a timely reflection on the cost of being the early test subjects of South Africa’s democratic project.

"Riku Lätti se poësie-debuut is meer as net nog ’n oulike digbundeltjie in Afrikaans; ek sien dit as ’n monumentale en omvattende deurgronding van alle fasette van die moderne mens se soeke na betekenis en — hier kom die grootste verrassing — selfs ons opvattings oor die teologie." – Koos Kombuis

"Aangrypende meditasies oor die heiligheid van onsekerheid. ’n Boek waarna ek telkens sal terugkeer om naby die aarde en werklikheid te bly om nie te gryp na die warm lug van dogma en onwetenskaplike verduidelikings van bestaan nie. – Dana Snyman