SKIN RAFTS
96pp., paperback, Cape Town, 2022
"Skin Rafts is a remarkable addition to Kelwyn Sole’s previous seven volumes of prizewinning poetry ... Sole is at the height of his poetic powers in Skin Rafts, unreconciled, in search of a poetics and politics of human warmth, companionship, and solidarity. ‘I’ve grown old within the parched/ landscape of the heart,’ he writes. ‘So why would/ anyone like me—or you now reading/ find value in a gentleness come suddenly/ down upon us all, or seek out its delight?/ How on earth do we move on from here?" John Trimbur, Professor of Writing, Literature and Publishing, Emerson College, Boston
"A courageous collection of poems that comes from a solid, serious and deeply sensitive vision." Stephen Clingman, Distinguished Professor of English, University of Massachussets, Amherst
Kelwyn Sole was born in Johannesburg and was educated there and in London. He worked in Botswana as a schoolteacher, in Namibia as an educationist and in Johannesburg for an anti-apartheid NGO, before teaching at the University of Cape Town for 30 years, retiring as De Beers Professor of Literature in 2016. His debut collection, The Blood of Our Silence (1987) won the Olive Schreiner Prize,and his seventh, Walking, Falling (2017) won the South African Literary Award (SALA) for Poetry. Skin Rafts is his eighth collection of poetry.