Synapse

Antjie Krog's readers will welcome her bold and stirring new collection of poetry, her first in 8 years. Themes such as language, memory and conscience are addressed with honesty and a remarkable intensity.
The poems reflect her deep attachment to her homeland and her continuing involvement with this country's complex history and people. At the same time she is redefining her identity as an Afrikaans poet, experimenting in some poems with the distortion of language. Krog wrote in a recent article about her use of language: 'I also wanted to cultivate a vocabulary of caring, to bring about a radical discursive encounter not intended to reduce, but to open, through a struggle with language, a vision on an ethical landscape.'
The collection includes moving poems about family - those ties that bind us, also to the generations before and after. There are also painful, disturbing poems which voice the poet's anger at the inequalities and injustices of our society There are poems which allow us to listen differently to some of the voices we hear around us every day. And there are poems about growing old and about parting and dying. Of these the eulogy on Nelson Mandela is a highlight.