This groundbreaking, multi-genre anthology answers the question: what did the literary landscape look like in South Africa at the start of the twenty-first century?

It documents a slice of this landscape by bringing together the writings of over twenty contributors through literary critique, personal essays and interviews. The book tells the story of the seismic shift that transformed national culture through poetry and is the first of its kind to explore the history and impact of poetry by Black women, in their own voices. It straddles disciplines: literary theory, feminism, history of the book and politics – thus decolonising literary culture.

Our Words, Our Worlds covers expansive reflections: from the international diplomacy-transforming poem, ‘I Have Come to Take You Home’ by Diana Ferrus, to the pioneering publisher duduzile zamantungwa mabaso; from the self-confessed closeted poet Sedica Davids, to the fiery unapologetic feminist Bandile Gumbi; from the world-renowned Malika Ndlovu, to the engineer and award-winning Nosipho Gumede; from the formidable foursome Feela Sistah, to feminist literary scholars V.M. Sisi Maqagi and Barbara Boswell. The collective contributions are a testimony to the power of creativity and centrality of poetry in a changing society.

This book is an assertion of Black women’s intellectual prowess and – as Gabeba Baderoon puts it – black women’s visions of ‘a world made whole by their presence’.

Die Singende Hand: Versamelde Gedigte 1984 – 2014 is Breyten Breytenbach se derde versamelbundel.

Dit vorm ’n drieluik met die vorige twee bande, Ysterkoei-Blues en Die Ongedanste Dans.

What s the point of poetry? It s a question asked in classrooms all over the world, but it rarely receives a satisfactory answer. Which is why so many people, who read all kinds of books, never read poetry after leaving school. Exploring twenty-two works from poets as varied as William Blake, Seamus Heaney, Rita Dove and Hollie McNish, this book makes the case for what poetry has to offer us, what it can tell us about the things that matter in life. Each poem is discussed with humour and refreshing clarity, using a mixture of anecdote and literary criticism that has been honed over a lifetime of teaching. Poetry can enrich our lives, if we ll let it. The Point of Poetry is the perfect companion for anyone looking to discover how.

'In a world in which we tend to look to what's new, to cutting-edge science and to medical breakthroughs for hope in better health, there's something marvellous in the realisation that one of the most beautiful and longest-lasting cures has been here all along - on the internet, on our bookshelves, under our noses. Words - down the centuries, over the ether, across the miles - have power to steady us, to make us feel better.' the Observer The ancient tradition of learning and reciting poetry is renowned for its wellbeing benefits - from strengthening the mind and boosting creativity to improving memory. The practice is as valuable as ever in our busy modern day lives, allowing us to focus on the rhythm of the present moment, slow down and switch off. A Year of Reading Aloud celebrates the power of spoken word with a poem to learn and love for each week of the year. Drawing both on familiar favourites and new voices, from Sylvia Plath and Maya Angelou to Instapoets Nikita Gill and Yrsa Daley-Ward - this is a book that will capture your imagination through verse and help you fall back in love with this beautiful art form. Includes a foreword by Rachel Kelly, bestselling author of 52 Small Steps to Happiness and Black Rainbow.

A Sunday Times Book of the Year Winner of the 2019 Elma Dangerfield Prize Shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 'This magnificent, highly readable double biography...brings these two driven, complicated women vividly to life' The Financial Times 'A gripping saga of a double-biography' Daily Mail 'A masterful portrait' The Times 'Vastly enjoyable' Literary Review 'Deeply absorbing and meticulously researched' The Oldie In 1815, the clever, courted and cherished Annabella Milbanke married the notorious and brilliant Lord Byron. Just one year later, she fled, taking with her their baby daughter, the future Ada Lovelace. Byron himself escaped into exile and died as a revolutionary hero in 1824, aged 36. The one thing he had asked his wife to do was to make sure that their daughter never became a poet. Ada didn't. Brought up by a mother who became one of the most progressive reformers of Victorian England, Byron's little girl was introduced to mathematics as a means of calming her wild spirits. Educated by some of the most learned minds in England, she combined that scholarly discipline with a rebellious heart and a visionary imagination. As a child invalid, Ada dreamed of building a steam-driven flying horse. As an exuberant and boldly unconventional young woman, she amplified her explanations of Charles Babbage's unbuilt calculating engine to predict, as nobody would do for another century, the dawn today of our modern computer age. When Ada died - like her father, she was only 36 - great things seemed still to lie ahead for her as a passionate astronomer. Even while mired in debt from gambling and crippled by cancer, she was frenetically employing Faraday's experiments with light refraction to explore the analysis of distant stars. Drawing on fascinating new material, Seymour reveals the ways in which Byron, long after his death, continued to shape the lives and reputations both of his wife and his daughter. During her life, Lady Byron was praised as a paragon of virtue; within ten years of her death, she was vilified as a disgrace to her sex. Well over a hundred years later, Annabella Milbanke is still perceived as a prudish wife and cruelly controlling mother. But her hidden devotion to Byron and her tender ambitions for his mercurial, brilliant daughter reveal a deeply complex but unsuspectedly sympathetic personality. Miranda Seymour has written a masterful portrait of two remarkable women, revealing how two turbulent lives were often governed and always haunted by the dangerously enchanting, quicksilver spirit of that extraordinary father whom Ada never knew.

Die Spaanse digter Pablo Neruda is ’n reus op die verhoog van die wêreldletterkunde. De Waal Venter, Afrikaanse digter en skrywer, bring met hierdie wye keuse van vertalings die sorgsame en elementele wêreld van Neruda met groot toewyding aan die Afrikaanse leser.

Die woorde van ʼn digter en ʼn vertaler het mekaar hier gevind. Die Afrikaanse gevoels- en dinkwêreld word met hierdie bundel vertalings deur de Waal Venter eindeloos verruim.

Hierdie is ’n tydlose werk, toeganklik en leesbaar met ’n vars inslag!

According to Rodger Kamenetz, Allen Afterman's Kabbalah and Consciousness makes the major traditions of Jewish mysticism more clear and profoundly revealing than any other work on the subject. Elie Wiesel says, "Poetry and mysticism are magnificently reconciled in Allen Afterman's book on Kabbalah's secret imagery and silent invocations." Here also is Afterman's poetry, described by Yehuda Amichai as "an almost private religious poetry for our post-religious age." The book includes an important interview with the author.

Dylan Thomas's letters bring the fascinating and tempestuous poet and his times to life in a way that no biography can. The letters begin in the poet's schooldays and end just before his death in New York at the age of 39. In between, he loved, wrote, drank, begged and borrowed his way through a flamboyant life. He was an enthusiastic critic of other writers' work and the letters are full of his thoughts on the work of his contemporaries, from T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden to Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. A lifetime of letters tell a remarkable story, each taking the reader a little further along the path of the poet's self-destruction, but written with such verve and lyricism that somehow the reader's sympathies never quite abandon him.

Dylan Thomas's letters bring the fascinating and tempestuous poet and his times to life in a way that no biography can. The letters begin in the poet's schooldays and end just before his death in New York at the age of 39. In between, he loved, wrote, drank, begged and borrowed his way through a flamboyant life. He was an enthusiastic critic of other writers' work and the letters are full of his thoughts on the work of his contemporaries, from T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden to Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. A lifetime of letters tell a remarkable story, each taking the reader a little further along the path of the poet's self-destruction, but written with such verve and lyricism that somehow the reader's sympathies never quite abandon him.

Part literary history and part medical sociology, Gilman's book chronicles the careers of three major immigrant Yiddish poets of the twentieth century - Solomon Bloomgarten (Yehoash), Sholem Shtern, and H. Leivick - all of whom lived through, and wrote movingly of, their experience as patients in a tuberculosis sanatorium. Gilman addresses both the formative influence of the sanatorium on the writers' work and the culture of an institution in which, before the days of antibiotics, writing was encouraged as a form of therapy. He argues that each writer produced a significant body of work during his recovery, itself an experience that profoundly influenced the course of his subsequent literary career. Seeking to recover the "imaginary" of the sanatorium as a scene of writing by doctors and patients, Gilman explores the historical connectionbetween tuberculosis treatment and the written word. Through a close analysis of Yiddish poems, and translations of these writers, Gilman sheds light on how essential writing and literature were to the sanatorium experience. All three poets wrote under the shadow of death. Their works are distinctive, but their most urgent concerns are shared: strangers in a strange land, suffering, displacement, acculturation, and, inevitably, what it means to be a Jew.

A Sunday Times Book of the Year Shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 'This magnificent, highly readable double biography...brings these two driven, complicated women vividly to life' The Financial Times 'A gripping saga of a double-biography' Daily Mail 'A masterful portrait' The Times 'Vastly enjoyable' Literary Review 'Deeply absorbing and meticulously researched' The Oldie In 1815, the clever, courted and cherished Annabella Milbanke married the notorious and brilliant Lord Byron. Just one year later, she fled, taking with her their baby daughter, the future Ada Lovelace. Byron himself escaped into exile and died as a revolutionary hero in 1824, aged 36. The one thing he had asked his wife to do was to make sure that their daughter never became a poet. Ada didn't. Brought up by a mother who became one of the most progressive reformers of Victorian England, Byron's little girl was introduced to mathematics as a means of calming her wild spirits. Educated by some of the most learned minds in England, she combined that scholarly discipline with a rebellious heart and a visionary imagination. As a child invalid, Ada dreamed of building a steam-driven flying horse. As an exuberant and boldly unconventional young woman, she amplified her explanations of Charles Babbage's unbuilt calculating engine to predict, as nobody would do for another century, the dawn today of our modern computer age. When Ada died - like her father, she was only 36 - great things seemed still to lie ahead for her as a passionate astronomer. Even while mired in debt from gambling and crippled by cancer, she was frenetically employing Faraday's experiments with light refraction to explore the analysis of distant stars. Drawing on fascinating new material, Seymour reveals the ways in which Byron, long after his death, continued to shape the lives and reputations both of his wife and his daughter. During her life, Lady Byron was praised as a paragon of virtue; within ten years of her death, she was vilified as a disgrace to her sex. Well over a hundred years later, Annabella Milbanke is still perceived as a prudish wife and cruelly controlling mother. But her hidden devotion to Byron and her tender ambitions for his mercurial, brilliant daughter reveal a deeply complex but unsuspectedly sympathetic personality. Miranda Seymour has written a masterful portrait of two remarkable women, revealing how two turbulent lives were often governed and always haunted by the dangerously enchanting, quicksilver spirit of that extraordinary father whom Ada never knew.

Almost eight centuries after its first publication, Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy remains an icon of Italian literature and of the epic genre. In Inferno, the first volume, the poet Virgil leads Dante's hero through hell, showing him the inhabitants of each of its nine circles and examples of the divine justice meted out to them. In this beautifully produced Apollo Library edition, Ciaran Carson's translation suffuses the text with wit, anger and irreverent vigor, without diminishing the pathos of the original. This is a retelling of Dante's epic journey for the 21st-century reader.

**WINNER of the 2019 PEN Ackerley Prize** 'A major literary talent . . . speaks about the power and powerlessness that young women are subject to in a wholly fresh, clear-eyed way . . . you'll find it hard to come away from The Terrible without a stab of recognition in your chest' Stylist 'You may not run away from the thing that you are because it comes and comes and comes as sure as you breathe.' This is the story of Yrsa Daley-Ward, and all the things that happened - 'even the Terrible Things (and God, there were Terrible Things)'. It's about her childhood in the north-west of England with her beautiful, careworn mother and her little brother who sees things written in the stars. It's also about growing up and discovering the power and fear of sexuality, about pitch grey days of pills and powder: going under, losing yourself, and finding your voice. 'Yrsa's work is like holding the truth in your hands' Florence Welch

In the spring of 1804 Coleridge sailed to the Mediterranean in the hope of restoring his health, recreating his poetic energies and solving his emotional problems. During the voyage he kept a very detailed diary. This title combines the pleasures of researched biography, and criticism and social history, with the narrative sweep of a novel.

'In Epic Continent, Nicholas Jubber is proposing a compelling and wonderful idea - that it is story that binds us together, that the great tales of Europe are not only far older than the nation-state but offer a more resilient understanding of our diverse and troubled continent. It is a masterly book, adventurous and wise' Philip Marsden 'The prose is colourful and vigorous ... Jubber's journeying has indeed been epic, in scale and in ambition. In this thoughtful travelogue he has woven together colourful ancient and modern threads into a European tapestry that combines the sombre and the sparkling' Spectator 'Compelling, thought-provoking, and courageous, this epic-poetic journey peels back layers of collective emotional and imaginative inheritance. Jubber gets under the skin of our complicated continent and his timing is dead right' Kapka Kassabova 'A genuine epic' Wanderlust Award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber journeys across Europe exploring Europe's epic poems, from the Odyssey to Beowulf, the Song of Roland to the Nibelungenlied, and their impact on European identity in these turbulent times. These are the stories that made Europe. Journeying from Turkey to Iceland, award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber takes us on a fascinating adventure through our continent's most enduring epic poems to learn how they were shaped by their times, and how they have since shaped us. The great European epics were all inspired by moments of seismic change: The Odyssey tells of the aftermath of the Trojan War, the primal conflict from which much of European civilisation was spawned. The Song of the Nibelungen tracks the collapse of a Germanic kingdom on the edge of the Roman Empire. Both the French Song of Roland and the Serbian Kosovo Cycle emerged from devastating conflicts between Christian and Muslim powers. Beowulf, the only surviving Old English epic, and the great Icelandic Saga of Burnt Njal, respond to times of great religious struggle - the shift from paganism to Christianity. These stories have stirred passions ever since they were composed, motivating armies and revolutionaries, and they continue to do so today. Reaching back into the ancient and medieval eras in which these defining works were produced, and investigating their continuing influence today, Epic Continent explores how matters of honour, fundamentalism, fate, nationhood, sex, class and politics have preoccupied the people of Europe across the millennia. In these tales soaked in blood and fire, Nicholas Jubber discovers how the world of gods and emperors, dragons and water-maidens, knights and princesses made our own: their deep impact on European identity, and their resonance in our turbulent times.

Asof geen berge ooit hier gewoon het nie is ’n opwindende en verweefde debuut uit ’n jong digter se pen. Met ’n eietydse en aktuele aanslag skryf Odendaal oor die politiek van verskil in ’n multikulturele samelewing, die natuur en ons ekologiese voetspoor, verganklikheid, menswees, die liefde, asook die onlangse studentepolitiek. Ten einde vra hy: Re mang? Wie is ons? En wie is hulle?

The History of Intimacy is the fourth collection by award-winning poet Gabeba Baderoon. These poems render various intimacies and private hurts with eloquence and tenderness: the lost innocence of a child, a loved one in an ambulance, young passion across a man-made divide, a mother visiting her son in jail, elegies to an admired musician, mentor and poet, and the reverberations of past injustices in District Six, the Cape Flats and Hangklip.

In 1949, after years of nomadic existence, nine-year-old Aeronwy Thomas and her family arrived at the Boat House in Laugharne, a small village on the Welsh coast. Here her father, the poet Dylan Thomas and mother, Caitlin, hoped to find peace, a place to settle and work. In Laugharne Dylan began some of his most famous works, including Under Milk Wood. Mornings were spent in Brown's Hotel, listening to the gossip at Ivy William's kitchen table. In the afternoons Caitlin would lock the poet into a shed in the garden, where he sat speaking his verse aloud as he wrote, or composed begging letters to patrons and friends. Often he would head off to London, and old haunts. Little Aeronwy enjoyed the new world around her. In the Boat House, ruled over by Caitlin, there was baby Colm and in the holidays visits from big brother Llewellyn, as well as Dolly, the cleaner and cook, and the house became a refuge for village characters, including Booda the deaf, mute ferry man. The memoir paints scenes of sudden drama and poetry: reading Wind in the Willows with her father in the evenings; fish treading in the mud below the house with her mother; afternoons with Grandma Flo and DJ at the Pelican. Dylan's fame grows and he tours the United States to read his poetry. Aeronwy watches as the marriage fractures, and at last the poet dies in New York, far away from his children. My Father's Places is a deeply moving portrait of growing up and an insight into the origins and the legacy of Dylan Thomas's poetry.

Martjie Bosman se debuutbundel, wat in 2003 met die Ingrid Jonkerprys vir poesie bekroon is. Die verse in hierdie versameling getuig van sterk beheer oor verstegniek, sober eenvoud en uitgebreide kennis van die breer literatuurlandskap. Dit spreek ook van intense meelewing met die geskiedenis en die natuur.

From the translator of the bestselling Poetic Edda (Hackett, 2015) comes a gripping new rendering of two of the greatest sagas of Old Norse literature. Together the two sagas recount the story of seven generations of a single legendary heroic family and comprise our best source of traditional lore about its members-including, among others, the dragon-slayer Sigurd, Brynhild the Valkyrie, and the Viking chieftain Ragnar Lothbrok.

Met Adam Small se oorlye op 25 Junie 2016 het daar ’n einde gekom aan die lewe van ’n unieke mens en ’n unieke oeuvre: ’n digter, dramaturg en denker met besonderse insig in die aktualiteite van sy tyd. Hoewel die toekenning van die Hertzogprys aan Small in 2012 en die gepaardgaande publisiteit daarrondom die idee vir ’n huldigingsbundel by die SA Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns laat ontstaan het, was dit Small se dood wat die deurslag gegee het om die publikasie te verwesenlik: Wanneer ’n kunstenaar sterf en sy stem vir ewig verstom het, bied dit immers die geleentheid om oorkoepelend oor die geheel van sy kunstenaarskap te besin. Die bydraes in hierdie bundel dra die ondertoon van ’n afsluiting, ’n terugblik op die mens en kunstenaar Adam Small, met temas soos die toekoms van Afrikaans en die Afrikaanse letterkunde, die uitbreidende rol van Kaaps, en sosiale vraagstukke soos bendegeweld en armoede. Mense wat Small van naby geken het is hier aan die woord saam met literatore en kollegas uit die maatskaplikewerk-omgewing waarby Small lewenslank betrokke was. Adam Small: Denker, digter, dramaturg – ’n Huldiging hoef nie as afsluiting van die gesprek oor Small se lewe en werk beskou te word nie – inteendeel: Dit bied juis ook geleentheid om die oorkoepelende blik oor Small se kunstenaarskap as inleiding tot verdere ondersoek te benut.

WINNER OF THE 2019 KIRKUS PRIZE IN NONFICTION WINNER OF THE 2020 STONEWALL BOOK AWARD-ISRAEL FISHMAN NONFICTION AWARD ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2019 One of the best books of the year as selected by The Washington Post; NPR; Time; The New Yorker; O, The Oprah Magazine; Harper's Bazaar; Elle; Kirkus Reviews; Publishers Weekly; BuzzFeed; Goodreads; School Library Journal; and many more. "A moving, bracingly honest memoir that reads like fevered poetry." -The New York Times Book Review "Jones's voice and sensibility are so distinct that he turns one of the oldest of literary genres inside out and upside down." -NPR'S Fresh Air "People don't just happen," writes Saeed Jones. "We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The 'I' it seems doesn't exist until we are able to say, 'I am no longer yours.'" Haunted and haunting, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir. Jones tells the story of a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence-into tumultuous relationships with his family, into passing flings with lovers, friends, and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one another-and to one another-as we fight to become ourselves. An award-winning poet, Jones has developed a style that's as beautiful as it is powerful-a voice that's by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze. How We Fight for Our Lives is a one-of-a-kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.