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In Earth-Circuit, Iyra E M Maharaj transports us to a dreamscape where surreal imagination creates its own force field, giving rise to an abundant range of ideas, experiences and images that prompt a new view on familiar and naturalised norms. Harnessing a dervish-type figure in the background, the poet shapes, crafts and pushes the boundaries of expectation beyond received ideas of God and gender. These strangely vital encounters of dream life and reconsidered waking come to life, creating a powerful mythology of woman as energy in an embrace of an elemental witchy power.The landscapes of this poet's vision welcome the mystery that resides in ancient places, and equally, in those where we have not yet lived. Hers are surprising, concrete, carved words - stately sounds, emotion bushing behind elegance; all serve as reminders of what you never knew you knew. - Phillippa Yaa de VilliersIyra E M Maharaj holds a doctorate in paleobiology from the University of Cape Town. She was born and raised in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal and studied biological sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal before moving to Cape Town for postgraduate research. As a matriculant, she was the recipient of the Francis & Jessica Brett-Young Memorial Prize in 2012. She currently teaches Biology at a high school in Cape Town. Alongside her teaching commitments, she is also a writer at KREST Publishers, working on a collaborative fiction novel. earth-circuit is her debut poetry collection.

For P. R. Anderson, poetry is "language equipping us as itself at the frontier of the unspeakable". Night Transit is such a volume, confronting the dark before and after life. There are poems of travel that take on an existential dimension and also poems of mythopoeic origin, memoirs of South Africa in the 1980s and after, and poems of witness and advocacy in the current ecocide. Whether it is love or death that axiomatically stirs up the poetry, Anderson sees into the cloudy transit with clear and original eyes. These poems range from a consideration of the fourth war of resistance at what is now Makhanda to the care of insects as populations collapse across the planet. Anderson considers the project of poetry, and recalls the euphoria of transit and relocation in an epoch of anguish, yearning and crisis.

Like a modern Orpheus, Chris Mann explores the underworld of the past and returns with peculiarly African poetry, based on the classics that deepens our understanding of the present. In this collection, youthful Narcissus gazes into a mobile phone, wandering Odysseus sails the seas of the Internet, and picknickers beside a river's pool in South Africa encounter the shades. The satirical poets of ancient Rome mock a strangely familiar hunger for sex and power among politicians, dispossessed Britons revolt against the empire, Vandals ruthlessly plunder wealth and land, and tech-savvy Phoenicians colonise the coast of a pastoral Africa. Rising seas engulf the lost city of Atlantis, and a terrible plague devastates the Athens of Socrates, Pericles, and the Parthenon. Palimpsests speaks to the interplay of different cultures and how the past is interwoven in the fabric of the present. It is a fresh, new offering enabling lovers of the classics to experience this world in a unique, modern and African way.

Kobus Moolman is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the University of the Western Cape. He has published seven collections of poetry and two plays, and edited a collection of poetry, prose and art by South African writers living with disabilities. He has won numerous local and international awards for his work, including, most recently, for his collection, A Book of Rooms, The Glenna Luschei Award for African Poetry.

Meen Kaul is riding high in her position as director of BeheraHouse, a safe haven in India for women who have survived domesticviolence. But when the stock market crashes, Meena loses her fundingfor a new campus. Seeing an opportunity to win women''s votes beforea national election, the Hindu Democratic Party (HDP) steps in with amultimillion-dollar grant.Meena''s worst fears come to pass as the nationalist Hindu party winsthe election and begins to chip away at a hundred years of progress onwomen''s rights. Meanwhile, Simon Bliss, America''s foremost "green"architect, arrives to design the flagship building of the new campus.Trapped in a stalled marriage, Simon falls for the bright and alluringMeena and is quickly sucked into the perilous world of Indian politics.In his attempt to loosen the HDP''s grip on Meena and win her affection,Simon spars with reactionary politicians, crooked priests, andsleazy businessmen who will stop at nothing to protect their interests.In the process, Simon comes face to face with disturbing truths about hisown past, and Meena finds herself trapped in a way she could have neverexpected.Langer has written an emotionally charged novel complete with forbiddenlove, murder, and corporate greed-all against the backdrop ofan ancient country trying to find its identity in a fast-changing world.

"Fiona Zerbst is one of the finest poets writing in South Africa today. In this, her fifth collection, she reflects on the notion of habitation - of human life as a series of sojourning moments. Her delicate evocations of complex relationships, landscapes and the lives of animals reveal a sensibility living in and through language. Crafted with precision and ingenuity, these poems never strain for effect. In Praise of Hotel Rooms shows Zerbst at the height of her poetic prowess." - David Medalie

"Allegories of the Everyday illuminates new ground: even as death looms, Brian Walter is more lucid, richly rhythmical, wide-ranging, compassionate and (in his own phrase) "relentlessly aware" than ever." - Dan Wylie Brian Walter holds a doctorate from Rhodes University and taught literature at the University of Fort Hare for 19 years. He later worked in educational and community development projects in the Eastern Cape and currently mentors the Helenvale Poets and is an active member of the Ecca Poets group. Walter has published several collections of poetry, including Baakens (Lovedale Press, 2000) and Otherwise and Other Poems (Echoing Green Press, 2014). His debut collection, Tracks (Lovedale Press, 1999), was the recipient of the 2000 Ingrid Jonker Prize. He was also awarded the 1999 Thomas Pringle Award for poetry published in journals. His other books include Groundwork: An Introduction to Reading and Writing about Poetry (Macmillan, 1997).

In this serious, often playful, sometimes outrageous volume, Murray draws inspiration from contemporary women's experimental poetics. The collection recognises female writers' equivocal relation to forms of the linguistic avant-garde such as L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, and brings embodiment and affective voicing back into the provocative equation. Yet, this is not a simple return to lyric intimacy. Murray inflects poetry's familiar inner speech with the sounds and shapes of found materials and engaging cultural noise.In Otherwise Occupied, the seamlessness of the beautiful, expressive poem becomes otherwise under the innovative necessity of the page as an open field of multiple (mis)takes and (mis)givings. Here, a poem is a space of enactment, a process of thinking-writing and performative exploration: idea ↔ body, lyric ↔ language, innovative necessity ↔ enduring convention. And in the end: there is no subject outside language.

The poems in this collection bear witness with the crisp attention of a Robert Capa photograph. These ecosystems, each with their own by-laws ... hold together such a curious, nearly impossible balance in his new book. - David Keplinger, author of Another City (Milkweed Editions, 2018)

Joan Hambidge has published over 25 collections of poetry. Her work uses the magnifying lense of poetry to dissect, examine and recompose the material of her own life and work, and in so doing, explores ideas and issues central to our understanding of language and meaning.The poems selected for translation in this compilation offer insights into her views across a spectrum of four categories: city life; love and family; ars poetica; and time and eternity. The Coroner's Wife offers English readers the unique opportunity to experience a prolific and renowned Afrikaans poet in their own language. Translations have been sensively rendered by wellknown poets, Charl JF Cilliers, Johann de Lange, Jo Nel and Douglas Reid Skinner.

"In her second volume of poetry; A Private Audience, Beverly Rycroft navigates the 'echoing counterpoint' of womanhood. Painful family relationships, illness and death are some of the themes if this riveting collection written in sparse, electric verses. The 'voracious memory' is haunting in this commendable work." - JOAN HAMBIDGE

Metaphysical Balm is a collection of poetry that utilises the lyrical subject, "Owl", who is transmuted and transfigured through various guises, rituals, visions, histories, myths and physical and spiritual bodies, becoming a symbol for wisdom, inquisitiveness, religious longing, introspection, transfiguration and femininity. The collection is a journey of spiritual fulfillment and physical healing from birth to adulthood, from death to the spiritual unknown.