Publisher: Deep South, South Africa
i have one eye full of dreams & hintentions
the other is full of broken mirrors
& cracked churchbells
i have one eye full of rivers & welcomes
the other is full of flickers & fades
i have
a memory full of paths & anointings
a mouth full of ripe infant suns
seven legs for the dancing river & the clement abyss
& a hope that corrodes the convulsions
we bless the long rough road
we bless the inscrutable darkness
where our names are rent into spirit
we bless the splinters & the air full of asphyxiations & amnesia
we bless our lacerations & our deformities
This book is a redesigned second printing of Seitlhamo Motsapi’s acclaimed earthstepper, first published in 1996. Reviewing earthstepper in New Coin, Laura Chrisman wrote:
A very far cry from official New South African pietistic discourse of reconciliation, this collection brilliantly fuses pan-Africanist militancy, romantic spirituality, and scathing attack on neo-colonialism in its global and local forms. The political urgency is never compromised by empty rhetorical posturing or aesthetic banality: this is a rich, experimental poetry, raining down fresh imagery, complex conceits carefully patterned to produce a volume of striking originality and stylistic rigour.
£15.00
About the author
Seitlhamo Motsapi was born in Bela-Bela/Warmbad in 1966. He has been a university lecturer and a speech-writer in the office of the President. The poems from this book have been published in many anthologies, including The Lava of this Land (USA), The Heart in Exile, Ten South African Poets (UK), A New Century of South African Poetry, and It All Begins, and international journals such as West Coast Line (Canada) and Tripwire (USA).