Song Trials

In his first volume of poetry, Mxolisi Nyezwa shifts South African lyrical poetry into powerful and strange landscapes. These are associative poems which move rapidly through multiple dimensions. They encompass the spiritual, the political and the bleakness of the everyday with a fluency of language and compelling deftness of image. song trials is like no other poetry you have read before. to feel you're free who knows, you move through burnt land cautious as the wind; and you're gagged again in your mother's lap, licking the breast and the puzzles of history. i have forgotten your form. i collide with doors without reason or shame. i walk thick-drugged and dumb. i describe a world simple and hard.