A dual language anthology of the poetry of Breyten Breytenbach, published while he was in prision charged with terrorism. In English and Afrikaans. Bib, 179pp, UK. REX COLLINGS.

1978 0860360911 Hardback

46 new poems from a winner of the Ingrid Jonker Prize for poetry. 66pp, SOUTH AFRICA. PROTEA BOOK HOUSE.

A collection of light verse. B/w illus, 54pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KWELA BOOKS.

Collection of poems first published in 1983. 128pp, SOUTH AFRICA. AFRICAN PERSPECTIVES.

Rose Mokhosi says: 'As young black South African women today, we are truly fortunate to have been born into these exciting times, when we have the power to shape our own lives. All thanks go to our rich history, our mothers, fathers and forefathers who led the way, fought the battles and brought us to this point, this time, where we can express ourselves in freedom and celebrate our beautiful African heritage with pride. This collection will give you a glimpse into our thoughts, our experiences, our lives. We hope it will be a source of inspiration to other young South Africans, encouraging them to dream big and live out their dreams. In the words of Hale Tsehlana, we write because it is time - OUR time.' 85pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS.

Bavino is ghetto-talk for everyman. In these new poems Rampolokeng looks through the destruction caused by those intoxicated by their own power, who put "vanity before humanity", in South Africa and globally, past and present. 120pp, SOUTH AFRICA. GECKO.

The earlier edition of translations from Ingrid Jonker's work, SELECTED POEMS by Jack Cope and William Plomer, is now out of print, so this new translation by two of South Africa's most illustrious authors, André Brink and Antjie Krog, is doubly welcomed. 128pp, SOUTH AFRICA. HUMAN & ROUSSEAU.

Poems exploring what it means to be part of a wider historical process in the new South Africa, evoking the physical and emotional landscapes of the country. 59pp, UK. CARCANET, 1857546407

Joan Metelerkamp’s seventh collection of poems. The title poem is a cycle that embodies the labours of the medieval alchemists, heating and burning, transforming passionate intensity, the search for an enduring element. I96pp, SOUTH AFRICA. MODJAJI BOOKS.

75 poems, some published previously elsewhere and some published here for the first time by the late revered poet. 120pp, SOUTH AFRICA. JACANA MEDIA.

Most of Cape Town's leading poets feature in this anthology that showcases different ways of seeing and experiencing the city and its surroundings. iv, 60pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DAVID PHILIP.

2001 0864863802 Paperback

Latest collection from the seasoned South African poet, Mahola laments for the loss of the cultural values of respect and humanity and yearns for reconnection with the rhythms of nature and rural life. He expresses a general disillusionment with 'man's rotten morals', and is critical of the different standards that apply to rulers and 'commoners'. His plea is for an accountable humanity. His is a praise singer's voice, perfectly attuned to the political and social complexities of the moment, intensely patriotic but also boldly outspoken in its criticisms of leaders and populace alike. 74pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS.

The award winning author and poet's first book of poems published in English. Krog herself translated most of them from the original Afrikaans for this edition. Includes brief translation and publisher's notes. Glos, 119pp, SOUTH AFRICA. RANDOM HOUSE SOUTH AFRICA.

Posthumous selection of 52 poems explores the cosmology and mythology of Kunene's Zulu heritage, broaching themes of history, family, legacy, and the importance ancestors. 108pp, NIGERIA. MALTHOUSE.

Practical poetry for any occasion, unravelling the security blanket of routines, exposing the soul of the quotidian. 94pp, SOUTH AFRICA. MODJAJI BOOKS.

'...profoundly about being a South African but goes beyond well-established concerns with social issues...The poems are written to evoke the speech of daily life and each holds in it the layered experiencing of questions of belief, of beauty, of dreams, of mothering, of belonging, of responsibility, of independence, of acceptance, of truth telling, of cultural difference, of tolerance...' 96pp. SOUTH AFRICA. DEEP SOUTH.

The author's thirty-third collection of poetry. Translated into English by John Irons and illustrated with b/w images. Also includes original Dutch versions. 87pp, SOUTH AFRICA. SNAIL PRESS.

A collection of poems that combine a dark humour and terrible grief with a lightness and restrained sensuality, making beautiful and living things out of the fabric of loss, grief, and emptiness. 56pp, SOUTH AFRICA. MODJAJI BOOKS.

Anthology of poetry and prose poems. It begins by evoking a childhood in South Africa under apartheid; it ends with the author as a father evoking his own children and life in France. 68pp, SOUTH AFRICA. JACANA MEDIA.

New collection of poetry inspired by the San peoples ho once inhabited the Ghaap Plateau of the Western Cape. 55pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KWELA BOOKS.

An anthology of recent South African writing including poetry, short fiction, essays, comedy, diary entries, song lyrics and opera. 188pp, SOUTH AFRICA. JACANA EDUCATION, 1919931236

A collection of poetry spanning the period 1963, when Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, to 2005, when he celebrated his 87th birthday, it includes 92 poems representing 25 countries. The poets include Wole Soyinka, Andrew Motion, Benjamin Zephaniah, Dennis Brutus, Wally Mongane Serote, José Craveirinha, Federico Mayor and Tupac Shakur. The title means Hail Mandela, referring to his clan name and the one by which he is affectionately known in South Africa. Much more than an anthology about one man, the poems are numerous small gestures of passionate creativity which combined create a narrative of the struggle to free all South Africans from the legacy of apartheid. This book is a tribute to Mandela's place in history and in our hearts, and is an example of poetry used as a political tool over the past 40 years. 296pp, UK. AFLAME BOOKS.

Home is as old as one's skin but as elusive as an object seen through the wrong end of a telescope. It is this sense of a view, skewed, intangible, which echoes throughout Karen Lazar's poetry. Waking in hospital after a post-operative stroke, she finds one side of her body paralysed and her world knocked out of kilter. Spatial, perceptual and subjective changes force her to view her new life in facets. 90pp, SOUTH AFRICA. MODJAJI BOOKS.

The author's tenth poetry title. Written in the form of a meditative dialogue between lover and beloved, the poem examines the relationship between African identity and ancestral guidance. 68pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KWELA BOOKS.

A collection of poetry by Gabeba Baderoon - recipient of the DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Poetry in 2005. In this new selection of poems, the poet explores how every room has its own silences, its own memories and secrets. She speaks of the quiet, gnawing loneliness of hotel rooms in 'Sleeping in hotels', of the ache of longing and how sometimes 'love is in the going away'. She also does not steer away from what is not said, from the silences between words, and how anger can spark 'the taste of blood never too far ...eyes watchful/heavy as bruises'. 64pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KWELA BOOKS.

These poems, many written in exile, span four decades and explore a wide spectrum of emotions and an earlier need to participate in the struggle to liberate the poet's land of birth. In the stunning and original rhythms of the poems, the subtle influence of jazz and the Setswana language can be felt. 104pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KWELA BOOKS.

A collection of poems written by whilst the poet was imprisoned in Port Elizabeth. 57pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DEEP SOUTH.

Debut collection by a widely-anthologised South African feminist poet, who views eroticism as a powerful aesthetic and political terrain. B/w photos, 90pp, SOUTH AFRICA. SKOTAVILLE PUBLISHERS.

New poetry. Gloss, 125pp, SOUTH AFRICA. TIMBILA PUBLISHING.

2005 0958464022 Paperback

His modes shift from the filmic to the interior monologue, his tones from the wickedly satirical to the poignant, the raucously contentious to the intimate. In Soles hands the prose poem becomes the perfect form. Full of arresting lines and images, its constellations create something that reads almost like a novel. It taps into the dream beneath the surface of South Africa. (Stephen Clingman). Gloss, 122pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS

Her poems reach into the past, isolating long-gone moments and imbue them with talismanic signifi-cance. Humour runs through the collection like a glowing thread from the gentle and affectionate an ode to Perry to the utterly female satire of on wanting a washing machine and where these things lead, to the dark undertow of blaming Lulu and the bitter pill of excuses. (Fiona Snyckers, author of 'Trinity Rising' and 'Trinity on Air'). 58pp, SOUTH AFRICA. MODJAJI BOOKS.

The hemispheric pull between Europe and Africa and the restlessness that results from inhabiting both worlds is reflected the poems of Robin Winckel-Mellish’s debut collection. She tries to reconcile the muted tones of her Europe with the riotous colour of Africa. The immediacy, vividness and dustiness of the harsh African sun is carefully offset by the softer quality of the Netherlands. 48pp, SOUTH AFRICA. MODJAJI BOOKS.

Items in Karen Press's poetry have always been unusually well lit and carefully positioned, with lots of space for viewing and contemplation. That is more true than ever of the exhibits in this most artfully designed and immensely absorbing pocket museum, with its sensitive evocation of the textures and nuances of South African working class life. 64pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DEEP SOUTH.

Retrospective collection where the author shares her personal journey through the social and political landscapes of the 1980s.These poems and short stories are written in a variety of styles and voices, ranging from anecdotal memory to historical moment to folklore tradition. 108pp, SOUTH AFRICA . UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS.

A collection of poetry charged with a sense of history and the present moment. Kelwyn Sole urges our capacity to think and to feel and to act. The South African poet's third collection. Winner of the Olive Schreiner Award for his first collection. 127pp, SOUTH AFRICAN. UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS.

A new collection of poetry by the South African poet. 138pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS.

Debut collection of poems. 80pp, SOUTH AFRICA. MODJAJI BOOKS.

A new volume of 450 poems which highlights the diversity of South African experience. Index, xxiv, 513pp, SOUTH AFRICA. AD DONKER.

2002 0868522244 Paperback

A posthumous selection of 50 poems from Tatamkhulu Afrika's previous eight collections of verse. The selection, made by his friends and editors, was a collaborative effort to ensure that all facets of his poetry, the political, religious and lyrical, are represented. 112pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KWELA BOOKS.

Poet with a gift for allusion and a sense of the sensuousness and subtleties of language. Collection celebrates the sacred aspects embedded in the everyday and offers a transcendent view of human mortality. 46pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS.

Explores life’s complexities, both beautiful and poisonous - love, death, art, the aftermath of war and genocide, travel, religion, revelation. More wide-ranging than her previous volumes, it charts experiences through which the self may be transformed. 58pp, SOUTH AFRICA. MODJAJI BOOKS.

A book of portraits, experiments and objects made of words. They find their locations between Cape Town and London, between the dawn of the new millennium and the present day. Guided by a biographical thread, in her first collection Kate Kilalea borrows the techniques of a craftsman to transform material into new shapes: an artist's concentrated gaze at the very particular subject in her portrait poems; an embroiderer's delicate craft of stitching to create a paced poetry, meticulous in detail. 86pp, UK. CARCANET.

Poems by the founding editor of ‘Incwadi’, a journal that explores the interaction between poetry and image. An Anglican priest, she works in human rights, healing and reconciliation. 72pp, SOUTH AFRICA. MODJAJI BOOKS.

From the languid innocence of the poems about her village, to her shattering images of Africa at war, Magona leads you headlong into her fireside circle where archetypes flicker like shadows on a face that has seen, and been. 82pp, SOUTH AFRICA. MODJAJI BOOKS.

Probing the complexities of South African life with integrity. Introduced by Njabulo Ndebele. 192pp, SOUTH AFRICA. RAVAN PRESS.

Written in the author's distinctive musical voice, her fifth book of poetry was written after the suicide of her mother and articulates the process of mourning and exploring the issues of life and death. The tiles of each poem has a Latin subtile taken from sections of the requiem mass. 67pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DEEP SOUTH.

Melissa Butler lives in Cape Town and Pittsburgh, PA. In the US, she teaches kindergarten. In South Africa, she writes and works with pre schools in the Eastern Cape. She has a Masters degree in Curriculum Theory from Penn State University and a Masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. This is her first book of poetry. 50pp, SOUTH AFRICA. MODJAJI BOOKS.

This collection of over 300 poems provide a broad historical spectrum of Black South African poetry. Presented chronologically, these poems show the develop-ment of cultural resistance in the country, from early Christian poets, right up to the Black Consciousness writers. 411pp, SOUTH AFRICA. RAVAN PRESS.

Collection of fifty-six new poems worked out travelling along the open road, a global traveller in a diffracted time, from Patagonian glaciers, along Canadian trails, on American railways and across Australian deserts and returning to rediscover the textures of home down Southern Africa’s roads. 82pp, SOUTH AFRICA. ECHOING GREEN PRESS.

Reprint. A collection of poems written mostly from exile form Apartheid South Africa. 176pp, UK. HEINEMANN AFRICAN WRITERS SERIES.

1973 0435906402 Hardback

Collection of unpublished poems found after the writer's death in boxes, diaries and letters, and in between the pages of old books. More than 130 poems, songs and psalms are assembled here by Anne Paton. Index, 214pp, SOUTH AFRICA. GECKO BOOKS

1995 1875011153 Paperback

Poetry capturing the feelings and aspirations of the black people of South Africa following the transition from Apartheid to democratic governance. 48pp, USA. RED SEA PRESS.

This collection of poems about the Soweto uprising of 1976 by a leading South African poet, capturing the mood of the country during the aftermath. 53pp, UK. REX COLLINGS.

Poems of brutally honest self-scrutiny. At the heart of the collection is a series of poems on the ageing body, loss of love and infertility. 58pp, SOUTH AFRICA. MODJAJI BOOKS.

Poems written in exile from South Africa. 97pp, UK. HEINEMANN AFRICAN WRITERS SERIES.

1978 0435902083 Paperback

Sandile Dikeni's first volume of poetry, Guava Juice, was enthusiastically received when published in 1992 (Mayibuye Books). Since then, Dikeni has been a regular commentator on the development of the country's democracy. In Telegraph to the sky this theme emerges, once again, as the force driving his poetry. 56pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS.

Kerry Hammerton is a poet, writer and alternative health practitioner. She is a graduate of The University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and The College of Integrated Chinese Medicine (Reading, UK). Her poetry has been published in South African literary journals such as Carapace, New Contrast and New Coin, online at Litnet and Incwadi. She has also been a contributor to The Empty Tin Readings (May 2010) and The Poetry Project. These are the lies I told you is her first poetry collection. 76pp, SOUTH AFRICA. MODJAJI BOOKS.

A powerful new long poem, defending human integrity. 48pp,

Poetry collection serving as an epitaph to South Africa's Struggle heroes, covering the historical period 1976-1996. 90pp, SOUTH AFRICA. VIVLIA.

1998 1868670694 Paperback

A selection of poems written over the course of thirty years evoking a wide range of emotions and paying tribute to a variety of cultural figures from Hugh Masekela to Nina Simone. Notes, 63pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KWELA BOOKS.

A reflection of the sometimes torturous evolution of inner self which so many South Africans face as they struggle to find who they are in a multicultural society that espouses the values of traditional culture while reaching for the promise of a global community. Thus the blend of Xhosa and English as Ntsiki strives to merge her modern views with cultural roots. She feels strongly the need to reclaim her culture and language and blend them within the context of a cosmopolitan society. 100pp, SOUTH AFRICA. AFRICAN PERSPECTIVES.