The girl who then feared to sleep
Angifi Dladla
The girl who then feared to sleep is Angifi Dladla’s first book of poems in English. In an imagistic voice, Dladla looks back to the last decades of apartheid, including the violent states of Emergency and the necklace killings by township ‘comrades’. Alongside these upheavals are poignant poems of dreams, childhood, family and the school where he taught at the time.
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Dladla has a great capacity to live with uncertainty and pain, and his poems reflect this. He is one of the few South African poets prepared to engage fully with the trauma of violence and apartheid in a direct descriptive way, while remaining open to the vulnerability as well as the possibility of the present. This openness allows him to redefine his relationship to both past and present. His awareness of the true violence and tension of post-apartheid society is liberating […] For him, revolution begins with a turbulent but necessary journey of self-discovery, encompassing introspection, dreams and heightened consciousness.
– Kyle Allen
Date of publication: 2001
ISBN 978-0-620-27777-8
80 pages
200 x 130mm
R120.00
Angifi Dladla 2016 © Vonani Bila |
Angifi Dladla (1950-2020) was a poet and playwright, as well as the author of eight plays, a collection of poems in isiZulu titled Uhambo, and two collections in English: The girl who then feared to sleep, and Lament for Kofifi Macu. His poetry has been published extensively in South Africa and internationally. He had a broad vision of poetry and a deep belief in its worth. His work ranges widely in style and form from densely imagistic poems to lyrical poems on love and nature, observations of supernatural beings, striking political satire and choral-traditional invocations. For a fuller biography, see Kelwyn Sole’s introduction to Maxwell the Gorilla and the Archbishop of Soshanguve in Other Links. Books published Anthologies |
Additional information
| Weight | 0.5 kg |
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Interviews & Articles
Tribute to Angifi Dladla by Kyle Allan New Coin, 2020 text PDF
Article by Angifi Dladla: "Growing Writers, Readers and Listeners" in The Fertile Ground of Misfortune: Teaching Practices in Creative Writing, 2017 text PDF
Article by Tom Penfold: "Angifi Dladla and the Bleakness of Freedom" Research in African Literatures, 2020 text PDF
Interview with Angifi Dladla by Joan Metelerkamp New Coin, 2001 text PDF
Other Links
Interview with Angifi Dladla
Interview with Angifi Dladla by Michelle McGrane LitNet, 2006
Review of other books by Angifi Dladla
Review by Alan Finlay of Lament for Kofifi Macu by Angifi Dladla New Coin, 2018 text PDF
Review by Tom Penfold of Lament for Kofifi Macu by Angifi Dladla Africa in Words, 2018 text PDF
Obituary for Angifi Dladla (24 November 1950 – 17 October 1920)
Obituary for Angifi Dladla by Jennifer Malec Johannesburg Review of Books, 2020
Essay on Angifi Dladla’s Maxwell the Gorilla and the Archbishop of Soshanguve
Introduction by Kelwyn Sole to Dladla’s posthumously published book length poem Johannesburg Review of Books, 2024
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