Publisher: Modjaji Books, South Africa
The Everyday Wife won the 2011 South African Literary Award for a poetry collection
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.
£25.00
About the author
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers is a multi-award-winning writer, performer and editor. After writing television scripts for ten years, she won a place on the British Council/ Crossing Borders programme and a grant from the Centre for the Book to publish her first volume of poetry Taller than Buildings (2006). Her poetry and prose are widely published in journals and anthologies. Her one-woman show, Original Skin, has toured in South Africa and went abroad in 2010. She has performed her poetry from Cuba to Cape Town, Berlin to Harare and of course in her home town, Jozi where she lives with an assortment of animals and her son.
Review
“What treats are served up in this new book of poems by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers! Like the best of poets, she makes language do her bidding, wresting new sense from familiar images and situations,surprising us and ambushing our expectation. Phillippa Yaa de Villiers illuminates relationships of many kinds and many intensities – between lovers, children and parents, the politics of emotion shared and remembered and confronted, sustained across the distance of place or memory. Sometimes, as in ‘The Organ of Love’ – which manages that crucial combination of passion and humour – she makes meaning hold on to the last word of the poem like the last drop of a delicious drink.”
Magaret Busby