Seasonal Fires New and Selected Poems

"Ingrid de Kok's poetry leaves me defenseless. I cannot respond to it as a friend, or reviewer, or journalist, or academic. It goes straight to my poetry heart. And I respond like a fool."-Antjie Krog "Read these poems to yourself late at night, in the early morning before anyone else is awake, as you wait for a friend or the train. Read the words aloud and allow each to liger on your tongue: histogram, grace, grenade. Read them and register what the best poetry does without pretense or apology: it gives us back our lives."-Susan Rich, Cape Times Ingrid de Kok's first book to be published in the United States is also the first volume to demonstrate the variety and continuity of de Kok's work over the last 25 years. In South Africa and internationally, readers have recognized and responded to de Kok's deeply developed sense of compassion. South Africa's most lucid and composed voice in contemporary poetry, she shares her ability to interweave the intensely personal world with the politically panoramic. Ingrid de Kok is one of few poets to successfully broach the burden of tragedy revealed by the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission hearings and the ceaseless ravaging of the AIDS pandemic. In doing so, she "capture[s] in the most delicate and individual terms devastating phenomena." (Antije Krog) In reading Mending one understands what it means to read truly fine poetry. Ingrid de Kok has published three collections of poetry, Familiar Ground, Transfer and Terrestrial Things to wide acclaim.

INGRID DE KOK has published three previous collections of poetry, Familiar Ground, Transfer, and Terrestrial Things. She lives in South Africa.