EK'T ACT

96pp., paperback, Karavan Press, Cape Town, 2025

ISBN: 9781037093708

In this series of long poems which flow seamlessly between English and Afrikaans, a speaker and a child are intertwined in language, body, landscape and poetry.

"A delicate, lyrical collection, Ek’t Act sings of the grand yearnings and desires of the body. With imagery that is at times candid, at times veiled, but always adventurous, the poet reveals herself as someone who maps out a world with an open, multilingual gaze." Alfred Schaffer

"In Ek’t Act plaas Klara du Plessis haar transtalige poëtika sentraal, ’n werks-wyse wat sy sedert haar debuut Ekke (2018) op intrigerende wyse oopskryf. Deur Afrikaanse en Engelse teksfragmente te vervleg, as deel van langer gedigsiklusse, ontstaan gedigte wat mekaar weerspieël én verruim, met veelvlakkige betekenislading. Temas soos taal, liggaamlikheid, begeerte en moederskap staan voorop. Met Ek’t Act vestig sy haarself as ’n grensverskuiwende nuwe stem in die Suid-Afrikaanse letterkunde." Alwyn Roux

Klara du Plessis is known for her contributions to long-form and translingual poetics. In Canada, she has published five books of poetry and literary essays. Her debut collection, Ekke (2018), won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and her critical writing received Arc Poetry Magazine’s Critic’s Desk Award. The book-length narrative poem, Hell Light Flesh (2020), was adapted and produced as a mono-opera film, composed by Jimmie LeBlanc, and premiered at the International Festival of Films on Art in 2023. Klara’s recent publications include Post-Mortem of the Event (2024), poetry that mobilises audiovisual media, transcription, waveform visualisation, and digital humanities methods, and the prose collection I’mpossible collab (2023).

Ek’t Act is Klara du Plessis' debut South African collection. Her fine art and sound installations have been exhibited in South Africa at Johannes Stegmann Gallery and the Gallery @ Glen Carlou. She lives in Montreal and spends parts of the year Cape Town.