AfricaSouth Africa

‘A manifestation of what it means to show up for one another as Black women writers’—Read an excerpt from Makhosazana Xaba’s new collection The Art of Waiting for Tales: Found Poetry from Grace

The JRB presents an excerpt from The JRB Patron Makhosazana Xaba’s new collection of poetry, The Art of Waiting for…

Book excerpts

Poetry by Keith Lewis, Nqobile Lombo, Busisiwe Mahlangu, Mthabisi Sithole and Xabiso Vili from Yesterdays and Imagining Realities: An Anthology of South African Poetry

The JRB presents poems by Keith Lewis, Nqobile Lombo, Busisiwe Mahlangu, Mthabisi Sithole and Xabiso Vili, selected from Yesterdays and…

International

Poetry as a short circuit in the machine of communication—Lidudumalingani talks to Simon van Schalkwyk about his debut collection, Transcontinental Delay

Guest City Editor Lidudumalingani talks to Academic Editor Simon van Schalkwyk about identity, memory, psychogeography, and his new poetry collection,…

Academic

‘Lines and images stick in the mind years after they have been heard or read’—Read Ivan Vladislavić’s Introduction to My Mother’s Laughter, a new collection of poems by the late Chris van Wyk

The JRB presents an excerpt from My Mother’s Laughter: Selected Poems by Chris van Wyk, edited by Ivan Vladislavić and…

Africa

‘I was anticipating that it would be banned before we even got it out’—Stella Nyanzi chats to Esther Mirembe about her prison poetry collection No Roses from My Mouth

In February 2020, poet and academic Stella Nyanzi was acquitted and released from prison after being held for eighteen months…

Africa

[Sampler issue] Read an excerpt from the first South African edition of the previously banned book Malibongwe: Poems from the Struggle by ANC Women, including poetry by Baleka Mbete

The JRB presents an excerpt from Malibongwe: Poems from the Struggle by ANC Women—a new edition of a lost piece…

Poetry

Writing Athlone—Gabeba Baderoon’s latest poetry collection The History of Intimacy maps the small hurts of apartheid, writes Toni Giselle Stuart

Toni Giselle Stuart reviews Gabeba Baderoon’s poetry collection The History of Intimacy, which won the 2019 University of Johannesburg Main…