Nightrider – Selected Poems | Poetry & Poetry Anthologies
Tatamkhulu Afrika
Kwela
Night Rider is a tribute and an affectionate selection of 50 poems from Tatamkhulu Afrika’s previous eight collections of verse. The selection was a collaborative effort to ensure that all facets of his poetry – the political, religious and lyrical – are represented. The selectors, all personal friends, were each at one time or another involved with his publications: Gus Ferguson, Isobel Dixon, Malcolm Hacksley, Shabbir Banoobhai and Robin Malan.
His novel, Bitter Eden, which was set in WWII prisoner of war camps, was published to critical acclaim in the United Kingdom and its second printing was launched in South Africa on his 82nd birthday.
‘[In his poetry Tatamkhulu Afrika] protests fiercely against depravation and inhumanity – but in human detail rather than succumbing to sloganising. With a vivid sense of place, he can see yet transcend squalor … sensuousness goes hand-in-hand with compassion, and magnanimity of spirit. In poems which, as he puts it, “lovingly circle the subject”.’ – Stewart Conn, Spectrum – Scotland