Trade Paperback, 160 pages RRP: R125, ISBN 1-4152-0018-1 Publication date: June 2006, Category: Poetry Description Seasonal Fires brings together the most significant poems from Ingrid de Kok’s first three collections, as well as 27 new poems. In particular, her first ground-breaking volume, Familiar Ground, long out of print, is republished here almost in its entirety. For the first time the variety as well as continuity of her work over the last 25 years are accessible in a single volume. Many of these poems meditate on the brutal divisions wrought by apartheid, on the fragile transitional bridge between old and “new” South Africa, and on the legacy of the past in the present post-apartheid environment – in particular the burdens revealed by the TRC and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In de Kok’s words, her new poems “once again, explore the tension between national and international events and individual loss or pleasure”. Varied in style and focus, they draw on personal and familial perspectives and use as vantage points places such as Canada and Italy that de Kok has lived in or visited. From Seasonal Fires, p.121 Reparation The action of restoring something to a proper or former state; spiritual restoration; the action of making amends for a wrong or loss; compensation for war damage by a defeated state. What it cost no one is telling. Can’t subtract what might have been. Can’t add up to a sum we understand. Can’t subdivide what once was seen. Can carve a tombstone for the dead, memorialise with flowers and crosses, exhume a body, clear a name, issue receipts for wrongs and losses. But can’t repair, and can’t restore an uncut arm, unbruised genital, untroubled sleep, unscarred face, unweeping mother, children, faith or wide unwatching private space. Read the Washington Post review of 1 October 2006 by Robert Pinsky E-mail us a comment on this book. (Comments may be edited and used on this website.) To buy this book www.exclusivebooks.com www.kalahari.net home   writers   books   contact   buy   rights all content © Umuzi, Random House Struik this website designed and maintained by Guanaco.co.za