Chris van Wyk
Chris van Wyk’s first (and only) book of poems, It Is Time to Go Home, was published in 1979 when he was 22 years old. He went on to become a well-known and much-loved writer of memoirs, biographies, fiction and children’s stories. But he continued to write poems; some were published in literary magazines and some in his memoir Shirley, Goodness & Mercy (2004). This volume brings together a selection of these poems, along with a substantial selection from his first book.
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His style includes a variety of focalisations, a recurring use of irony and an attention to quotidian detail, focusing on the daily lives and lamentations of people around him in the street. No aspect of township life is regarded as too mundane or too insignificant; which demonstrates both his social commitment and his refusal to be content with sloganizing. […] This is one of South Africa’s finest poets. His poetry contains a richness that should inspire future analysis from a number of different thematic and formal angles: this is particularly so, given the fact that the depth and significance of van Wyk’s example and work must have grown unfamiliar to some of our younger generation of readers and admirers of poetry up until now.
– Kelwyn Sole, New Coin
