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As we have come to expect with Joan Metelerkamp's work, these poems can be read individually or, more rewardingly, as a body, from cover to cover. Formal but fluent, the 'sonnets' ('soundings') of this sequence marry cycle and narrative, old and new, secular and sacred, momentary and eternal. This is a strange and immediately familiar book -: at its simplest it traces the story of a mother's 'letting-go' her grown children, a daughter's relocation to the Northern hemisphere, a wedding, shadows of deaths and losses, sparks of joy. It recalls the story of Demeter and Persephone, but goes on from there in immediately accessible South African, contemporary terms. Above all, it celebrates!

Absent Tongues is Kelwyn Sole's sixth collection of poetry; a collection that speaks of tenderness, anger, ambivalence and fear. This is territory Kelwyn has long made his own - hymnal vignettes that thread the landscape of South Africa with patterns of myth and people, with pasts, presents, and, at times, with futures. We come away from these poems with something akin to nostalgia, something like a yearning to belong in the most fundamental sense - to be water, air, bone, sky. Kelwyn Sole writes with grace, acuity and with thoughtful philosophical purpose, affirming his position in the forefront of contemporary South African poetry.

The hemispheric pull between Europe and Africa and the restlessness that results from inhabiting both worlds is reflected in A Lioness at my Heels. Robin Winckel-Mellish reconciles the muted tones of her Europe with the riotous colour of Africa. The immediacy, vividness and dustiness of the harsh African sun is carefully offset by the softer quality of the Netherlands. All poems are mediated and considered in the light of a spiritual home. Robin Winckel-Mellish lives in the Netherlands and runs a poetry critique group in Amsterdam. Her work has been published in many international literary journals. Her first collection, A Lioness at my Heels, explores living in Europe and being South African.

"Home is as old as one's skin but as elusive as an object seen through the wrong end of a telescope." It is this sense of a view, skewed, intangible, which echoes throughout Karen Lazar's Hemispheres. Waking in hospital after a post-operative stroke, she finds one side of her body paralysed and her world knocked out of kilter. Spatial, perceptual and subjective changes force her to view her new life in facets. The fragmented view is made apparent by means of a triptych of clusters which charts Karen's experience from Metamorphosis, through Rehabilitation and Adaptation. Quietly reflective, deeply lyrical, Hemispheres is concerned with returning separated parts into a whole and coming home to the self.

Looking for Trouble is a collection of short stories set in Yeoville from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. The stories capture with a dark humour the lives of young people trying to make a go of things, given the constraints of the country and the volatile period. Most of the stories have been published in literary magazines or in collections in South Africa, the UK and Uganda.

The everyday wife is a handy little book of practical poetry for any occasion. Mischievous and profound words recreate everyday life in South Africa and other parts of the world. In this, her second volume of poetry, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers unravels the security blanket of routines, exposing the soul of the quotidian.

Sindiwe Magona's poems conspire with her. Even years after being written, they still seem warm from her lips, and it is this residue of her telling them that draws you into their confidence. From the languid innocence of the poems about her village, to her shattering images of Africa at war, Magona leads you headlong into her fireside circle where archetypes flicker like shadows on a face that has seen, and been. Please, Take Photographs is defiant and tender, horrific and homely, at once irreverent, outspoken and beautiful.