Publisher: Modjaji Books, South Africa
£25.00
About the author
Melissa Butler lives in Cape Town and Pittsburgh, PA. In the US, she teaches kindergarten. In South Africa, she writes and works with pre schools in the Eastern Cape. She has a Masters degree in Curriculum Theory from Penn State University and a Masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. This is her first book of poetry.
Review
“In these poems Melissa Butler has the unique ability to take almost anything that happens to catch her eye or to gure in her mind’s eye—these can range from a bowl to a hadeda, from the concept of edges to the cusp of a silence—and make it speak volumes not only about itself, but about us in our human lives. Such are her poetic gifts; and such is the quality of this remarkable debut.”
Stephen Watson, South African Poet
“The poems in Lava Lamp are compelling: at once conversational and uncanny. Colleen Higgs tells the truth but tells it slant, insisting on the singularity of everything that is familiar — domesticity, marriage, motherhood, family. The sequence of poems set in Johannesburg is captivating.”
Finuala Dowling, Poet and creative writing teacher