South African Poet Quotes

Nadine Gordimer

Breyten Breytenbach

Roy Campbell

If you're a writer, you can make the death of a canary stand for the whole mystery of death.

Nadine Gordimer

Or like a poet woo the Moon,
Riding an armchair for my steed,
And with a flashing pen harpoon
Terrific metaphors of speed.

The Unbelievers like to explore various strategies in pursuit of happiness. Whereas Believers have a tendency of wanting to stay ignorant of the things that could make them unhappy, the Unbelievers like to induce sadness in order to attain happiness.

Map age genes place of origin
and love's lineaments. For mapped onto each body is love. Carthography of one's own country
or the contours of a foreign land

Leaving traces of ourselves, as in creative productivity, could then be seen as part of the definition of consciousness for us as well. We know that in order to progress we must stretch for something just out of reach—if only for a life that will be more compassionate and decent than the cruelty, paranoia, greed, narrow corporatism, or narcissism we mostly indulge in and find such ample justification for. And so we dream.

Breyten Breytenbach

Words are such thin shavings of the fractal fruit,
tiny scraping of the skin that holds
these joyously determined swirls of history
inside their juicy turbulence.
Talking itself westward after the day's feast,
each little word with its meaning strapped to its back
falls down the swell of tomorrow
like a hiker with hopeful new shoes.

This wind you hear is the birth of memory
when the moment hatches in time's womb
there will be no art talk, the only poem
you will hear will be the spearpoint pivoted
in the punctured marrow of the villain; the
timeless native son dancing like crazy to
the retrieved rhythms of desire
fading
in-
to
memory.

Keorapetse Kgositsile

It struck me that our history is contained in the home we live in, that we are shaped by the ability of these simple structures to resist being defiled

What I do remember has never left my recall. On the other hand, what I have forgotten, I forgot with amazing swiftness: inside a week, and it was all gone. Moreover, it has remained safely tucked away. It doesn't haunt me. And for that, I am truly grateful.