Black Butterflies | Poetry & Poetry Anthologies

Ingrid Jonker

The earlier edition of translations from Ingrid’s work, Selected Poems by Jack Cope and William Plomer, is now out of print, so a new translation will be welcomed by readers. But that this new translation is by two of South Africa’s most illustrious authors, André Brink and Antjie Krog, is indeed a special event. What is more, they did the translations with the help of one of the finest English poets in South Africa, Ingrid de Kok.

Of their process, André writes the following in the Introduction: “In most cases, Antjie and I would each do our own translations of a poem, after which we would meet to discuss and hammer out a second draft; this would then be passed on to Ingrid de Kock for comment and recommendations, before all three of us would meet for prolonged sessions of mixing and matching, of trial and error, before arriving at something like consensus.”