PRESENCE OF THE EARTH

Stephen Watson is, in J.M. Coetzee’s words, “by now established as one of the leading South African poets writing in English.” In this new collection, the first since his celebrated versions from the /Xam, Return of the Moon(1991), Watson gives a further resonance and depth to those places and concerns which he has already made his own.

Here again are poems of Cape Town and the Cedarberg, rhythms as insistent as Cape weather, tonal contrasts as vivid and as supple as mountain light. But these are not simply poems of place. The landscapes of Watson’s poetry are real presences, animated by strangeness, possessed of an intense serenity. They give shape to human lives, and bring to existence itself something of their own palpable – if elusive – meaning.

Here, also, are the signs of new directions in Watson’s poetry. To his characteristic blend of narrative and lyric elements, he has added a more confessional writing, intimate in tone, at times almost conversational. Nowhere is this more evident than in the book’s remarkable concluding section, “A Kromrivier Sequence”.

Stephen Watson. lectures in English at the University of Cape Town.

Cover illustration from an etching by Pippa Skotnes

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