XAMISSA

120pp., illus., paperback, New York, 2018

A book-length poem that explores the history of Cape Town. "Xamissa adapts the mythical name for the springs and streams running from Table Mountain to the sea, under the city itself, before the colonial Dutch ships came" from the back cover

"Both poetry and the capacity to recover history's untold cruelties find a home in Xamissa, the name 'crossed out' beneath the one we know. 'Cape Town'. In Henk Rossouw's stunning collection of this name, crossed-out histories refuse their erasure, spill their liquid meaning, and reclaim the name that means' place of sweet waters'. But because what you see when you look at this place is too easy at first, you might miss that its bright surfaces are like 'a beautiful wet bag over the mouth of'. Xamissa misses nothing." Gabeba Baderoon, author of The Dream in the Next Body and The History of Intimacy


Henk Roussouw teaches at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.