Absent Tongues: Poetry

“Kelwyn Sole is South Africa’s foremost poet writing in English and this, his sixth volume, maintains and reaffirms an oeuvre that does not shy from the difficult complexities of our lives. In lyrics and elegies, love is made strange and new, forceful yet fragile. And his political poems refute any notion that political art can never be art. His insights draw us into the heartlessness of our new political masters, the confused brutality behind the murder of poor immigrants, and of a hovering “sadness at what might have been / had we more courage / had we search / further than our skins our pockets”. His voice is our national conscience.”
- Rustum Kozain

“Kelwyn Sole’s work thinks this country into some kind of language we can return to when reality confounds us, and the language of paid political commentators dumbfounds us. It is restless in its forward motion, formidably rich in its recruitment of forms of language to capture and make coherent the inner logic and madness of a human landscaoe that is itself constantly, restlessly inventing itself.”
- Karen Press

76 pages ISBN 978-1-920397-40-1