{"product_id":"9781997476542","title":"I Wish I’d Said... Vol. 9","description":"\u003cp\u003eAs we mark the 10th year of The AVBOB Poetry Competition, we celebrate the publication of another excellent and moving poetry anthology, *I Wish I’d Said… Vol. 9*, a record of the 2025 AVBOB Poetry Competition.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis fine collection of South African poetry presents the best six poems from the competition, plus three commissioned poems, in each of the country’s 11 official written languages. An English translation accompanies each non-English poem, enabling a shared understanding across South Africa’s richly diverse linguistic landscape. “What makes *I Wish I’d Said… Vol. 9* commendable and important is the way it foregrounds the varying cultural views of death, enabling us to experience through words the ways vernacular-language speakers challenge it, how different religious communities deal with death stoically or emotively, and what rituals or myths an atheist or a Buddhist might use to navigate the loss of a loved one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIs death the end of a person’s existence? Again, many answers, but whatever one’s view, the poems of *I Wish I’d Said… Vol. 9*, read at funerals, memorials or in years to come, are a kind of afterlife, the memory traces of the departed, keeping them vivid in the minds of the living with each reading.” – Joan Hambidge\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"book-contributors\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"contributor-item\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"contributor-role\"\u003eAuthor\u003c\/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=Author+Joan+Hambidge\" class=\"contributor-link\"\u003eJoan Hambidge\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"contributor-item\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"contributor-role\"\u003eAuthor\u003c\/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=Author+Katjie+Sponono+Mahlangu\" class=\"contributor-link\"\u003eKatjie Sponono Mahlangu\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"contributor-item\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"contributor-role\"\u003eAuthor\u003c\/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=Author+Douglas+Reid+Skinner\" class=\"contributor-link\"\u003eDouglas Reid Skinner\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Joan Hambidge,Katjie Sponono Mahlangu,Douglas Reid Skinner","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48065756528803,"sku":"9781997476542","price":260.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0741\/7836\/3555\/files\/9781997476542.jpg?v=1788211046","url":"https:\/\/graffitibooks.co.za\/products\/9781997476542","provider":"Graffiti Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}