DRYAD PRESS | Forgotten Poets

In learning and understanding poetry, readers are frequently directed to overseas poets and their work as examples of great writing. Robert Frost, W H Auden, Walt Whitman, Seamus Heaney, or Emily Dickinson – the list is endless.  While there is no denying the skill and value of these writers, this encouragement has been to the detriment of South African poetry.  South Africa is a county alive with culture and historical significance, where great poets have written innovative and ground breaking poetry.  There is an archive of South African poets and poems that are almost forgotten to readers of poetry today. This page will explore these poets and some of their poems, employing no specific selection criteria as to time and influence. It is simply the poets we are interested in reading and poems of theirs that we love!

“All hungers pass away,
we lose track of their dates:
desires arise like births,
reign for a time like potentates.”

– Arthur Nortje, ‘All hungers pass away’