WHEN THE FIRES GO DOWN

214pp., paperback, Black Ghost Books, Johannesburg, 2026

ISBN: 9781049274676

In this collection of poems Lesego Rampolokeng writes in the hour after the blaze: the time of smoke, residue and reckoning - when the flames subside, what still burns beneath?

Part prayer, part performance, part treatise, the poems surge from dense, jazz-charged freedom sonics and black radical invocation into historical re-enactment, social-media derangement and repurposing, and hard street-level tribute to Orlando West, its wounds, its styles, its unfinished struggles, a microcosm of what’s been, what is and what’s to come.

"If there was any doubt about Lesego Rampolokeng's important place in the literary history and trajectory of this country, the prophetic power and poetic pyrotechnics of his latest offering should be enough to suffocate such spirit of uncertainty for good." Unathi Slasha, author of the novels Jah Hills and The Hollow Sound of Lightweight Bodies

Performance poet, novelist and playwright Lesego Rampolokeng was born in 1965 in Orlando West, Soweto, and rose to prominence in the turbulent 1980s. His latest publications include the poetry collections The Bavino Sermons and Head on fire, rants/ notes/ poems 2001-2011 and the novel Bird-Monk Seding. He and has collaborated with visual artists, filmmakers, theatre and opera producers and musicians, in South Africa and internationally.