Al is die maan 'n misverstand | Poetry & Poetry Anthologies

Danie Marais

South African Literary Award Poetry Prize (2010)

Al is die maan ’n misverstand is a homecoming, not only locally, but also in a new relationship and in happiness. However, Marais’s poetry is anything but blissful – solitude is still the feeling underlying his poetic instinct.

Therefore the poems in his second collection are, for example, about someone sitting and doodling “the seven lucky letters” of a beloved’s name, poised between sadness and happiness; they are poems that know that “forever only lasts a breath” and “that there is no Plan B”; poems about someone who watches “passers-by who do not even almost touch each other” from his balcony, about Mary Coughlan’s Tired and Emotional that hangs in the air like cigarette smoke and reminiscence at three o’clock on a Sunday morning.

(Watch an interview with Danie on RadioBremen.de about comic strips in SA. Interview in German.)