COMMON GROUND Do you think your poems belong to a separate, inner world, removed from your working life? Shari Daya is a Cape Town-based poet and geographer who uses her academic research and expertise as raw material for her deeply engaging poems. Her debut collection, Land / Lines, was published by Karavan Press…
Tag: AVBOB Poetry Competition
AVBOB Persverklaring (Valentynsdag)
Larry Schwartz LOVE AND GRATITUDE Love and grief tend to leave human beings speechless. Under their spell, we still turn to poetry for words of ecstasy or consolation. As we prepare to celebrate Valentine’s Day on 14 February, the AVBOB Poetry Project celebrates the stirring, tender love poems of Larry Schwartz, a poet and…
AVBOB Persverklaring
Genna Gardini FOLLOWING THE THREAD When you start writing a poem, do you try to work out in advance what you are going to say? When we read strong poems written by other people, it is easy to believe that they arrived perfectly finished and fully formed. In fact, the best poems…
AVBOB Persverklaring
THE LIGHTEST TOUCH We gather enormous quantities of information in the course of a lifetime. When we write poetry, however, we often fail to draw on this specialised information, limiting ourselves to the world of emotions and personal recollections. Keith Gottschalk is a poet and retired academic with a boundless passion for astronomy….
AVBOB Persverklaring
WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT FOR POETS AND READERS AS ANNUAL COMPETITION CLOSES The 2026 AVBOB Poetry Competition officially closed at 23:59 on 30 November 2025. Poets were invited to submit up to 10 poems in any of South Africa’s 11 official written languages on the theme I Wish I’d Said… At the time of closing, more…
AVBOB persverklaring
Sarah Uheida NO SLOGANS, BUT POETRY Each year, South Africans observe 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children and recommit themselves to protecting the younger and more vulnerable members of society. But what does it mean to observe such a time imaginatively? Sarah Uheida is a multi-award-winning young poet and…
AVBOB Persverklaring
Mangaliso Buzani PRESENCES AND ABSENCES It is notoriously difficult to remain fully alive in the present moment. Emotions related to the past and the future are always intruding on our awareness. Sometimes, it takes a strong poem to teach us how to handle such intrusions imaginatively. Mangaliso Buzani is a poet and lecturer…
AVBOB Persverklaring
CLOSE CONTACT No matter where we live, we experience countless human interactions every day, often without the time or patience to analyse or explore them properly. As we prepare to celebrate World Cities Day on 31 October, the AVBOB Poetry Project features the work of Allan Kolski Horwitz, poet, publisher (Botsotso Books) and activist….