In each lifetime there are certain books that should be read more than once for they caution against the catastrophic … Read More

That old womanlived through the Holodomor          the second of the World Wars                    Stalin.She ate weeds and chewed leather.Now your cock … Read More

There are three Angels. Into their bronzelight, steps your mother bearinga loaf of dark breadand red cherry juice in a … Read More

Note Five on Day Thirty-four Now look!You’ve burst the buttons of your pompous Emperor jacket—Those little buttons made of children’s … Read More

It was with great pleasure that I recently represented Poetry in McGregor in launching David Friedland’s new book “The Solitary … Read More

Note One: On the Tenth Day You seem to share, with all tyrants,a fetish for piled corpsesfor eyeballs blown from … Read More

Last Thursday, I was privileged to attend, with my daughter, the honouring and celebration of Archbishop Tutu’s life. The eulogies … Read More

What can be done about those now labelled Migrants and Refugeesthose caught up on the border between Belarus and Polandthose … Read More

Poetry in McGregor recently held two Literary Aperitifs at Woodlands Eatery in Cape Town. These were in anticipation of the … Read More

Some days have an extraordinary measure to them as did today.I woke long before dawn.The moon, waning, was still quite … Read More

Wednesday is garbage day in my area and there is always an interesting juxtaposition between what is thrown out by … Read More

I was in the Cederberg mountains when the Great Fire of 2021 consumed the library of the University of Cape … Read More

THE ARROWS OF FATE Every Thursday for the past five weeks, I have travelled the M5 from Cape Town to … Read More

I heard tell of a man who was wrongly accused of murder and spent forty-three years in solitary confinement, in … Read More

Sometimes a person enters your life and you instantly have the sense of ‘Friend’. Many years may go by, in … Read More

I went seeking art while confined during the Corona Lockdown. This was found at various times of each day, looking … Read More

Now the planet rests. For the first time since industrialisation, we have ceased to overpower the sounds of the natural … Read More

Yesterday, on Easter Sunday, the Italian tenor, Andrea Bocelli gifted the world with a concert that was streamed live on … Read More

Now we enter a 21-day period of seclusion.It is an essential seclusion, ordained by government in the face of pestilence.Yet … Read More

I have long considered that we are already within an ecological apocalypse— it is not something coming— it’s here. The … Read More

November holds the anniversary of the 1918 Armistice, signed at Le Francport, “at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day … Read More

I spend my professional life as a novelist and as a curator of anthologies. So I work, on the one … Read More

Denis Goldberg, aged 86, is one of two Rivonia Trialists still alive. The second is Andrew Mlangeni. They were sentenced … Read More

It was with great pleasure that I gave a second reading of my Poetry in McGregor presentation KNOCKING AT THE … Read More