Matric Rage

Matric Rage received judges’ commendation in the 2016 Ingrid Jonker Prize. The judges praised Gardini’s “lyrical-experimental imagination”, the “edginess” and “sexiness” of her debut collection, and the “wonderfully varied scenarios” of her poems.

The eagerly-awaited debut from one of the South Africa’s most exciting young poets, Matric Rage is Genna Gardini’s reckoning with youth, womanhood and mortality. With hyper-literate, humorous and often heartbreaking poems, Gardini signals a wind change in South African poetry – where the personal is not just political, but polemical, too. In sickness and sex, misogyny and manners, this is a collection that, above all, showcases a powerful writer coming unapologetically into her own.