List of South African poets
Encyclopedia
The poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

 of South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 covers a broad range of themes, forms, and styles, reflective of the diversity of its cultures and complex historical influences.

As with the rest of the African continent, the two primary traditions that have shaped the South African poetry landscape are the written / published word and the ancient oral traditions. These works are written and recited in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

 and the range of indigenous South African languages
Languages of South Africa
South Africa has eleven official languages: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu. Fewer than one percent of South Africans speak a first language other than an official one. Most South Africans can speak more than one language. Dutch and...

, the mostly predominant of these being Zulu
Zulu language
Zulu is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population...

 and Xhosa
Xhosa
The Xhosa people are speakers of Bantu languages living in south-east South Africa, and in the last two centuries throughout the southern and central-southern parts of the country....

. Traditional indigenous literature includes oral poetry forms such as “izibongo
Isibongo
In Zulu culture, "isibongo" is a clan name or "praise name". The term is derived from the verb "-bonga" meaning "to praise", "to thank", "to worship" or "to call by a clan name". The plural form "izibongo" refers to praise poetry, a typical Zulu art form where the fame of a person is extolled....

” - praise poetry with the traditional role of the ‘imbongi’ or praise poet as social commentator and jester of the times, to a significant extent being taken up in the form of spoken word , by younger generations of poets living in an urban setting.

‘From the ritual songs and stories of the country's earliest inhabitants to the rousing calls to action by anti-apartheid artists, oral poetry has always been an integral part of South Africa's literary and cultural heritage’. Voicing the Text: South African Oral Poetry and Performance - Duncan Brown, 1999

National annual poetry festivals such as Poetry Africa
Poetry Africa
Poetry Africa is an international poetry festival held annually in Durban, South Africa.More than twenty poets, predominantly from South Africa and elsewhere on the African continent, participate in the 7–10 day Poetry Africa, an international poetry festival that is based mostly in Durban, South...

 , Urban Voices, WordFest (as part of the annual National Arts Festival
National Arts Festival
The National Arts Festival is one of the most important events on the South African cultural calendar, and the biggest annual celebration of the arts on the African continent....

), Badilisha Poetry X-Change
Badilisha Poetry X-Change
Badilisha Poetry X-Change is a platform dedicated to showcasing poetry from Africa and the Diaspora. The project came out of recognizing the lack of documentation of African poets, on the African continent and in the rest of the world. Its aims are to fill this void as well as create a...

, and now the online podcasting platform Badilisha Poetry Radio
Badilisha Poetry Radio
A project of the Badilisha Poetry X-Change Badilisha Poetry Radio is an online platform created to appreciate, celebrate and discover contemporary Pan-African poetry. Badilisha Poetry Radio focuses on weekly podcasts featuring poets from the African Continent and its Diaspora...

, as well as rapidly increasing access to the internet over the last two decades, has accelerated South African poets’ exposure to historical archives and current global trends in poetry. These have encouraged the growth, visibility and appreciation of this literary form within the country.

A-C

  • Lionel Abrahams
    Lionel Abrahams
    Lionel Abrahams was a South African novelist, poet, editor, critic, essayist and publisher. He was born in Johannesburg, where he lived his entire life...

  • Tatamkulu Afrika
    Tatamkulu Afrika
    Tatamkulu Afrika was a South African poet and writer.-Writing:...

  • Mike Alfred
    Mike Alfred (poet)
    Mike Alfred is a South African poet who lives in Johannesburg. His poems have been widely published in anthologies and literary journals. He has three collections of poetry and a book about the city and people of Johannesburg.-Works:...

  • Ingrid Andersen
    Ingrid Andersen
    Ingrid Andersen is a South African poet.Andersen lived in Johannesburg most of her life, worked in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape for five years and relocated to the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands in 2007....

  • Gabeba Baderoon
    Gabeba Baderoon
    Gabeba Baderoon is the 2005 recipient of the DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Poetry.She was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa on February 21, 1969. She currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa and Pennsylvania, USA....

  • Shabbir Banoobhai
    Shabbir Banoobhai
    Shabbir Banoobhai is a South African poet.He was born in Durban and, after school wanted to study at University. The costs were prohibitive, and instead he studied to become a teacher at Springfield College...

  • Sinclair Beiles
    Sinclair Beiles
    Sinclair Beiles - was a South African beat poet and editor for Maurice Girodias at the Olympia Press in Paris. He developed along with William S...

  • Robert Berold
    Robert Berold
    Robert Berold is a South African poet, editor and authorBerold was born in Johannesburg, but currently lives in the Eastern Cape. He matriculated from Hilton College at the age of 16, and went on to study Chemical Engineering and English Literature at the University of Witwatersrand, and later at...

  • Vonani Bila
    Vonani Bila
    Vonani Bila is a South African author and poet. He is the founder and editor of the poetry journal Timbila and directs the Timbila Poetry Project in Limpopo Province. He works as the co-ordinator of the Limpopo NGO Coalition and edits the newspaper Community Gazette. He has written eight story...

  • Roy Blumenthal
    Roy Blumenthal
    Roy Blumenthal has been an active poet since the early 1990s.He is the founder of Barefoot Press, which started out printing free pamphlets...

  • Herman Charles Bosman
    Herman Charles Bosman
    Herman Charles Bosman is the South African writer widely regarded as South Africa's greatest short story writer. He studied the works of Edgar Alan Poe and Mark Twain, and developed a style emphasizing the use of irony...

  • Breyten Breytenbach
    Breyten Breytenbach
    Breyten Breytenbach is a South African writer and painter with French citizenship.-Biography:Breyten Breytenbach was born in Bonnievale, Western Cape, approximately 180 km from Cape Town and 100 km from the southernmost tip of Africa at Cape Agulhas...

  • Dennis Brutus
    Dennis Brutus
    Dennis Vincent Brutus was a South African activist, educator, journalist and poet best known for his campaign to have apartheid South Africa banned from the Olympic Games.-Life and work:...

  • Guy Butler
    Guy Butler (poet)
    Guy Butler was a South African poet and writer....

  • Roy Campbell
    Roy Campbell (poet)
    Ignatius Royston Dunnachie Campbell, better known as Roy Campbell, was an Anglo-African poet and satirist. He was considered by T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Edith Sitwell to have been one of the best poets of the period between the First and Second World Wars...

  • Charl Cilliers
    Charl Cilliers
    Charl Jean Francois Cilliers is a South African author and poet. His published works include "West-falling Light" , "Has Winter No Wisdom" and "For Whites Only" ....

  • Sue Clark
  • Johnny Clegg
  • Jack Cope
    Jack Cope
    Jack Cope was a South African novelist, short story writer, poet, and editor.Jack Cope was born in Natal, South Africa and attended boarding school in Durban, afterwards becoming a journalist on the Natal Mercury and then a political correspondent in London for South African newspapers...

  • Jeremy Cronin
    Jeremy Cronin
    Jeremy Cronin is a South African writer, author, and noted poet. A longtime activist in politics, Cronin is a member of the South African Communist Party is a member of the National Executive Committee member of the African National Congress...

  • Patrick Cullinan
    Patrick Cullinan
    Patrick Roland Cullinan was a South African poet and biographer.He was born in Pretoria into a significant diamond-mining family and attended Charterhouse School and Oxford University in England...

  • Gary Cummiskey
    Gary Cummiskey
    Gary Cummiskey is a South African poet and publisher.He was born in England and moved to South Africa in 1983. He is the editor of Dye Hard Press, which since 1994 has published writers such as Gail Dendy, Arja Salafranca, Alan Finlay, Philip Zhuwao, Roy Blumenthal, Gus Ferguson and Kobus Moolman...

  • Sheila Cussons
    Sheila Cussons
    Sheila Cussons was an Afrikaans poet. She was born on the Moravia missionary station near Piketberg, South Africa, and studied fine arts at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg. She was one of the most important poets in Afrikaans, besides an accomplished painter and artist.The poet D.J...


D-G

  • Achmat Dangor
    Achmat Dangor
    Achmat Dangor is a South African writer. His most important works include the novels Kafka's Curse and Bitter Fruit , but he is also the author of three collections of poetry, a novella and a short-story collection...

  • Ingrid de Kok
    Ingrid de Kok
    - Biography :Ingrid de Kok grew up in Stilfontein, a gold mining town in what was then the Western Transvaal. When she was 12 years old, her parents moved to Johannesburg. In 1977 she emigrated to Canada where she lived until returning to South Africa in 1984. She has one child, a son...

  • Isobel Dixon
    Isobel Dixon
    - Life :Born and raised in South Africa and living now in Cambridge, Isobel Dixon works in London as a literary agent, She has published several anthologies. In 2000 she won the South African SANLAM Award for Poetry. In 2004 she won the Olive Schreiner Prize and the Oxfam Poems for a Better Future...

  • Modikwe Dikobe
    Modikwe Dikobe
    Modikwe Dikobe was a novelist, poet, trade unionist and squatter leader in Johannesburg, South Africa in the 1940s. He worked as a hawker, clerk, domestic servant and night watchman.-Further Reading:...

  • Angifi Dladla
    Angifi Dladla
    Angifi Proctor Dladla is a South African poet, playwright, writing teacher and coach.While in Geneva, as playwright-in-residence, he wrote Kgodumodumo, a play about traditional knowledge, and the protection of biodiversity.In 1997, he founded the Bachaki Theatre, and in 1998, the Community Life...

  • I D du Plessis
  • Koos du Plessis
    Koos du Plessis
    Jacobus Johannes du Plessis was a prominent South African singer-songwriter and poet, colloquially known as Koos Doep...

  • Finuala Dowling
    Finuala Dowling
    Finuala Dowling is a South African poet and writer.The seventh of eight children born to radio broadcasters Eve van der Byl and Paddy Dowling, Finuala Dowling obtained an MA in English from the University of Cape Town before lecturing in English at the University of South Africa for eight years...

  • Elisabeth Eybers
    Elisabeth Eybers
    Elisabeth Françoise Eybers , was a South African poet. Her poetry was mainly in Afrikaans, although she has translated some of her own work into English....

  • Kingsley Fairbridge
    Kingsley Fairbridge
    Kingsley Ogilvie Fairbridge was the founder of a child emigration scheme to British colonies and the Fairbridge Schools...

  • Gus Ferguson
    Gus Ferguson
    Gus Ferguson is a South African cartoonist, poet and pharmacist. He was born in Scotland, but moved with his parents to South Africa in 1949....

  • Sheila Meiring Fugard
    Sheila Meiring Fugard
    Sheila Meiring Fugard was born in England, moving to South Africa. She is a writer of short stories and plays and the wife of South African playwright Athol Fugard.-Personal history:...

  • Keith Gottschalk
    Keith Gottschalk
    Keith Gottschalk is a South African poet, known for his anti-apartheid poetry. He was born on the 14 March 1946 in Cape Town, where he still lives...

  • Stephen Gray
    Stephen Gray (writer)
    Stephen Gray is a South African writer and critic who was born in Cape Town in 1941. He studied at the University of Cape Town, Cambridge University, England, and the University of Iowa, USA. Until 1992 he was Professor of English at the Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg.Gray is a prolific...

  • Robert Greig
  • Mafika Gwala
    Mafika Gwala
    Mafika Pascal Gwala is a contemporary South African poet and editor, writing in English and Zulu.Mafika Gwala was born and grew up in [Verulam] North of Durban, KwaZulu-Natal. He spent most of his adult life in Mpumalanga Township, west of Durban...


H-L

  • Megan Hall
    Megan Hall (poet)
    Megan Hall is a South African poet. She was born and lives in Cape Town.Her first volume of poems Fourth Child won the Ingrid Jonker Prize for 2008.-References:...

  • Joan Hambidge
    Joan Hambidge
    Joan Helene Hambidge is an Afrikaans poet, literary theorist and academic . She is without a doubt the most prolific poet in Afrikaans, controversial as a public figure and critic and notorious for her out-of-the-closet style of writing...

  • Colleen Higgs
    Colleen Higgs
    Colleen Higgs is a South African writer and publisher. As a writer, she has published poems and stories in literary magazines in South Africa for the past 15 years...

  • Robert Homem
    Robert Homem
    Robert Homem is a South African poet and publisher. Homem was born in Johannesburg. He edited Something Quarterly and Sun Belly Press, which since 1994 has published writers such as Alan Finlay, Gus Ferguson and Gary Cummiskey...

  • Christopher Hope
    Christopher Hope
    Christopher Hope is a South African novelist and poet who is known for his controversial works dealing with racism and politics in South Africa.-Life:...

  • Peter Horn
    Peter Horn
    Peter Rudolf Gisela Horn, born 7 December 1934 in Teplice Czechoslovakia . He is a well-known South African poet, who made his mark especially with his anti-Apartheid poetry. At the end of World War II he had to flee from his home and settled with his parents first in Bavaria and later in...

  • Allan Kolski Horwitz
    Allan Kolski Horwitz
    Allan Kolski Horwitz is a South African poet. He was born in Vryburg, grew up in Cape Town, matriculating from Herzlia. He later moved to Johannesburg after studying Philosophy and Literature at the University of Cape Town....

  • Alan James
    Alan James (poet)
    Alan James is a South African poet, now living in Australia.A former lawyer and law lecturer, and the founder of the poetry journal Upstream he has published seven collections of poetry...

  • Wopko Jensma
    Wopko Jensma
    Wopko Jensma Wopko Jensma Wopko Jensma (born 26 July 1939 Ventersdoorp, Wopko Jensma (born 26 July 1939 [[Ventersdoorp]], Wopko Jensma (born 26 July 1939 [[Ventersdoorp]], [[South Africa]), is a [[South Africa]]n [[poet]] and [[artist]]...

  • Liesl Jobson
    Liesl Jobson
    Liesl Jobson is a South African poet and musician.She received first prize in the Inglis House Poetry Contest 2003 and her poetry was performed at the "Art of Survival" exhibition of the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Women's Art Group. She was the Focus Poet for Timbila 2005 and her poetry...

  • Sarah Johnson
    Sarah Johnson (poet)
    Sarah Johnson , is an award-winning South African poet.Sarah Johnson was born in Cape Town, and has lived there her entire life. She completed her MA in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town, and published her first work, a collection of poetry, in 2004...

  • Ingrid Jonker
    Ingrid Jonker
    Ingrid Jonker , was a South African poet. Although she wrote in Afrikaans, her poems have been widely translated into other languages...

  • Aryan Kaganof
    Aryan Kaganof
    Aryan Kaganof is a South African film maker, novelist, poet and fine artist. In 1999 he changed his name to Aryan Kaganof.-Filmography:...

  • Anne Kellas
    Anne Kellas
    Anne Kellas is a South African poet, reviewer and editor.She was born in Germiston in 1951 in what was then the Transvaal, now Gauteng, in South Africa. Her earliest work appeared in 1968 but she began writing seriously in 1975 when she met up with a group of writers associated with Lionel Abrahams...

  • Keorapetse Kgositsile
    Keorapetse Kgositsile
    Keorapetse William Kgositsile is a South African poet and political activist, and was an influential member of the African National Congress in the 1960s and 1970s. He lived in exile in the United States from 1962 until 1975, the peak of his literary career...

  • Olga Kirsch
    Olga Kirsch
    -Biography:Kirsch was born and brought up in Koppies in the Orange Free State. Her father had emigrated there from Lithuania and, though a Yiddish speaker, brought his daughter up to speak English. She nevertheless wrote in Afrikaans, publishing eight books of poetry in that language, as well as a...

  • Koos Kombuis
    Koos Kombuis
    Koos Kombuis is a South African musician, singer, songwriter and writer who became famous as part of a group of anti-establishment maverick Afrikaans musicians, who, under the collective name of Voëlvry , toured campuses...

  • Rustum Kozain
    Rustum Kozain
    Rustum Kozain is a South African poet and writer.He was born in Paarl. After he matriculated, he studied at the .From 1994 - 1995 he attended Bowling Green State University in Ohio on a Fullbright Scholarship....

  • Uys Krige
    Uys Krige
    Mattheus Uys Krige was a South African writer of novels, short stories, poems and plays in both Afrikaans and English. He was born in Bontebokskloof in the Cape Province and educated at the University of Stellenbosch.From 1931 to 1935 he lived in France and Spain, acquiring fluency in both...

  • Antjie Krog
    Antjie Krog
    Antjie Krog, born October 23, 1952 in Kroonstad, Orange Free State, South Africa, is a prominent South African poet, academic and writer. In 2004 she joined the Arts faculty of the University of the Western Cape.- Early life :...

  • Anton Krueger
  • Mazisi Kunene
    Mazisi Kunene
    Mazisi Kunene was a South African poet best known for his poem Emperor Shaka the Great. While in exile from South Africa's apartheid regime, Kunene was an active supporter and organizer of the anti-apartheid movement in Europe and Africa...

  • Cornelis Jacobus Langenhoven
    Cornelis Jacobus Langenhoven
    Cornelis Jacobus Langenhoven , wrote under the pen name C.J. Langenhoven and was better known as Sagmoedige Neelsie or Kerneels. He had a formidable role in South Africa's Afrikaans literature and cultural history, and was one of the young language's foremost promoters...

  • C. Louis Leipoldt
    C. Louis Leipoldt
    Dr. Christian Frederik Louis Leipoldt was a South African poet, who wrote inthe Afrikaans language. Together with Jan F. E. Celliers and...

  • Douglas Livingstone
    Douglas Livingstone (poet)
    Douglas Livingstone was a South African poet.He was born in Kuala Lumpur, but his family moved to Natal after his father was taken prisoner during the Japanese invasion of Malaya. He attended Kearsney College and in 1964, he started work as a marine biologist in Durban...


M

  • Don Maclennan
    Don Maclennan
    Donald Alasdair Calum Maclennan was a South African poet, critic, playwright and English professor.He published a number of plays, short stories, collections of poems and scholarly works....

  • Mzi Mahola
    Mzi Mahola
    Mzi Mahola was born on 12 February 1949 as Mzikayise Winston Mahola.Mzi Mahola is his nom de plume. He is a South African writer and poet.-Biography:...

  • Chris Mann
    Chris Mann
    Chris Mann is an Australian composer, poet and performer specializing in the emerging field of compositional linguistics, coined by Kenneth Gaburo and described by Mann as "the mechanism whereby you understand what I'm thinking better than I do."...

  • Eugene Marais
    Eugene Marais
    Eugène Nielen Marais was a South African lawyer, naturalist, poet and writer.- His early years, before and during the Boer War :Marais was born in Pretoria, the thirteenth and last child of his parents, Jan Christiaan Nielen Marais and Catharina Helena Cornelia van Niekerk...

  • Andrew Martens
    Andrew Martens
    Andrew Martens is a Canadian ice hockey defenceman currently playing for the Wichita Thunder of the CHL. He played three seasons of college hockey at Bemidji State University before turning pro in the 2005–06 season...

  • John Mateer
    John Mateer
    -Early life and education:He was born in Roodepoort, South Africa in 1971, and grew up on the outskirts of Johannesburg. He spent some of his childhood in Canada, before returning to South Africa in 1979. In 1989 he moved to Australia with his family. He attended the International Writing Program...

  • Don Mattera
    Don Mattera
    Donato Francisco Mattera , better known as Don Mattera, is a South African poet and author.- Overview :...

  • James Matthews
    James Matthews (writer)
    James Matthews is a South African poet, writer and publisher.He was detained by the apartheid government in 1976, and was denied a passport for 23 years....

  • Mzwakhe Mbuli
    Mzwakhe Mbuli
    Mzwakhe Mbuli, a devout former Deacon at Apostolic Faith Mission Church in Naledi Soweto South Africa, known as "The People's Poet, Tall man, Mbulism", is a popular poet and mbaqanga singer in South Africa...

  • Kim McClenaghan
    Kim McClenaghan
    Kim McClenaghan , is a South African poet and writer.He was born in the Transkei in 1974, and moved to Cape Town at the age of 14. He now lives in London. He completed his MA in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town, and published his first work, a collection of poetry, in 2002 and his...

  • Michelle McGrane
    Michelle McGrane
    Michelle McGrane is a poet born in Zimbabwe in 1974. Her poetry has been published in local literary journals and internationally in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States....

  • Sheila Meiring Fugard
    Sheila Meiring Fugard
    Sheila Meiring Fugard was born in England, moving to South Africa. She is a writer of short stories and plays and the wife of South African playwright Athol Fugard.-Personal history:...

  • Joan Metelerkamp
    Joan Metelerkamp
    Joan Metelerkamp , is a South African poet. She was born in Pretoria in 1956 and grew up in Kwazulu-Natal. She was the editor of the poetry journal New Coin from 2000 to 2003.-Poetry:...

  • Ruth Miller
    Ruth Miller (poet)
    Ruth Miller was a South African poet. Born in 1919 in Uitenhage she grew up in the northern Transvaal and spent her adult life in Johannesburg. She worked as a school secretary and later English teacher. She died of cancer in 1969....

  • Abdul Milazi
    Abdul Milazi
    Abdul Milazi is a poet, author and financial journalist. He was born at the Bhobhoyi village, in Port Shepstone, a small town in the KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa....

  • Kobus Moolman
    Kobus Moolman
    Kobus Moolman is a South African poet.He has published four volumes of poetry, a collection of radio plays, and teaches creative writing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban...

  • Isabella Motadinyane
    Isabella Motadinyane
    Isabella Motadinyane was a South African poet, performance poet and actor.She was born in Soweto and was a member of the Botsotso Jesters poetry group, and was on the editorial board of Botsotso Publishing....

  • Seitlhamo Motsapi
    Seitlhamo Motsapi
    Seitlhamo Motsapi, a South African poet whose works have been published in many anthologies and international journals, was born in 1966 in Bela Bela, Limpopo....

  • Casey Motsisi
    Casey Motsisi
    Karobo Moses Motsisi better known as Casey Motsisi or Casey 'Kid' Motsisi was a South African short story writer and journalist.He was born in Johannesburg and worked for a time in Pretoria as a teacher....

  • S.E.K. Mqhayi
    Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi
    Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi was a Xhosa poet and historian.He was born in the Cape Province, South Africa to a Christian family. At the Lovedale institution he was trained as a teacher. In addition to teaching and helping to edit journals in the Xhosa language, he was appointed to the Xhosa Bible...

  • Oswald Mtshali
  • Amitabh Mitra
    Amitabh Mitra
    Amitabh Mitra is an Indian born South African physician, poet, and artist His paintings depict dramatized stick figures. He studied medicine and did his postgraduate studies in orthopedic surgery at the Gajara Raja Medical College, Jiwaji University, Gwalior, India. He further specialized in...


N-S

  • Arthur Nortje
    Arthur Nortje
    Arthur Nortje was a South African poet.He was born in Oudtshoorn, and went to school in Port Elizabeth, being taught by the acclaimed writer Dennis Brutus...

  • D. J. Opperman
    D. J. Opperman
    Diederik Johannes Opperman was one of the best-known Afrikaans poets of the twentieth century.He was born on 29 September 1914 in Dundee in Natal, where he grew up. He went to school in the towns of Estcourt and Vryheid, and afterwards received an M.A. degree from the University of Natal...

  • William Plomer
    William Plomer
    William Charles Franklyn Plomer CBE was a South African author, known as a novelist, poet and literary editor. He was educated mostly in the United Kingdom...

  • Karen Press
    Karen Press
    Karen Press is a South African poet.She was born in Cape Town, and currently lives in Sea Point. She is a full-time writer and editor, having published eight collections of poetry, a film script, short stories, as well as educational material and textbooks in the fields of science, mathematics,...

  • Thomas Pringle
    Thomas Pringle
    Thomas Pringle was a Scottish writer, poet and abolitionist, known as the father of South African Poetry, the first successful English language poet and author to describe South Africa's scenery, native peoples, and living conditions.Born at Blaiklaw , four miles south of Kelso in Roxburghshire he...

  • Lesego Rampolokeng
    Lesego Rampolokeng
    Lesego Rampolokeng is a South African writer, playwright and performance poet.- Early life and education :Lesego Rampolokeng was born in 1965 in Orlando West, Soweto, Johannesburg. He studied law at the University of the North in South Africa. .- Works :Lesego Rampolokeng prominence happened in...

  • Azila Talit Reisenberger
    Azila Talit Reisenberger
    Dr. Azila Talit Reisenberger is a distinguished author, the head of the Hebrew Department at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, a champion of Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, and an acting Rabba.- Biography :...

  • Robert Royston
    Robert Royston
    Robert N. Royston was one of America’s most distinguished landscape architects, based in the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. His design work and university teaching in the years following World War II helped define and establish the California modernism style in the...

  • Arja Salafranca
    Arja Salafranca
    Arja Salafranca is a South African writer and poet.Arja Salafranca was born in Spain in 1971 and is a South African writer and poet. She has had fiction, poetry and essays published in a number of journals and anthologies....

  • Sipho Sepamla
    Sipho Sepamla
    Sydney Sipho Sepamla was a contemporary South African poet and novelist.Born in a township near Krugersdorp, Sipho Sepamla lived most of his life in Soweto. He studied teaching at Pretoria Normal College and published his first volume of poetry, Hurry Up to It!, in 1975...

  • Mongane Wally Serote
    Mongane Wally Serote
    Mongane Wally Serote is a South African poet and writer. He was born in Sophiatown, Johannesburg and went to school in Alexandra, Lesotho and Soweto. He first became involved in Black Consciousness when he was finishing high school in Soweto...

  • Steve Shapiro
    Steve Shapiro
    Steve Shapiro is an American music producer, session musician, and jazz vibraphonist.-Biography:Shapiro grew up in Connecticut and graduated from Yale University in 1985 after studying with artists Steve Swallow, Dave Samuels and Anthony Davis. He was an early proponent of midi synthesizers, and...

  • Adam Small
    Adam Small (writer)
    Adam Small is a South African writer who was involved in the Black Consciousness Movement and other activism. He is noted as a "coloured" writer who wrote works in Afrikaans that dealt with racial discrimination and satirized the political situation...


T-Z

  • Totius
  • Ernst van Heerden
    Ernst van Heerden
    Ernst van Heerden was a leading Afrikaans poet.Born in Pearston, Eastern Cape, South Africa, he was an openly gay academic famous for his poems on sport. He matriculated at Grey High School, Port Elizabeth. In 1948 he received a silver medal in the Olympic Games International Poetry Competition...

  • Christopher van Wyk
    Christopher van Wyk
    Christopher van Wyk is a South African children’s book author, novelist and poet.Van Wyk was educated at Riverlea High School in Riverlea, Johannesburg, where he lived until 2005. He worked as a clerk for the independent South African Committee for Higher Education as an educational writer of...

  • A.G. Visser
    A.G. Visser
    Andries Gerhardus Visser was a well-known early Afrikaans poet.-Biography:Visser was born on the farm Zaaifontein in the Fraserburg district of South Africa. An intense drought drove his parents from their farm in Carnarvon and he was born in a tent in the farmyard, under the shadow of a pear tree...

  • Benedict Wallet Vilakazi
    Benedict Wallet Vilakazi
    Benedict Wallet Vilakazi was a South African Zulu poet, novelist, and educator. In 1946, he became the first black South African to receive a Ph.D...

  • Crystal Warren
    Crystal Warren
    Crystal Warren is a South African poet. Born and raised in Port Elizabeth she has lived for the past twenty years in Grahamstown where she works at the National English Literary Museum and teaches a creative writing class at Rhodes University....

  • Stephen Watson
    Stephen Watson
    Stephen Watson was a South African poet.Most of his poetry is about the city of Cape Town, where he lived most of his life. He was a professor in English at the University of Cape Town...

  • Mary Morison Webster
    Mary Morison Webster
    Mary Morison Webster was a Scottish born novelist and poet who came to South Africa with her family in 1920. She lived in Johannesburg where she was an influential book reviewer for The Rand Daily Mail and Sunday Times for 40 years...

  • George Weideman
    George Weideman
    George Henry Weideman was a South African poet and writer. Born in Cradock, a town in the Eastern Cape Province, he grew up between the Karoo of the Eastern Cape and the Northern Cape...

  • David Wright
    David Wright (poet)
    David John Murray Wright was an author and "an acclaimed South African-born poet".-Biography:Wright was born in Johannesburg, South Africa 23 February 1920 of normal hearing....

  • Makhosazana Xaba
    Makhosazana Xaba
    Makhosazana Xaba is a South African poet. She trained as a nurse and has worked a women's health specialist in NGO's, as well as writing on gender and health....

  • Gert Vlok Nel
    Gert Vlok Nel
    Gert Vlok Nel is a South African poet. He studied English, Afrikaans and history at Stellenbosch University and worked as a guide, a bartender and a watchman. He has published one collection of poems, Om te lewe is onnatuurlik , for which he received the Ingrid Jonker Prize...


See also

  • List of poets
  • List of South African writers
  • South African literature
  • South African poetry
    South African poetry
    The poetry of South Africa covers a broad range of themes, forms and styles. This article discusses the context that contemporary poets have come from and identifies the major poets of South Africa, their works and influence....

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