Alone in the House
In this posthumously published collection of poems, Michael Wessels’ passionate love for and knowledge of the natural world shines through.
Due out in June 2023
R200.00
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Alone in the House
In this posthumously published collection of poems, Michael Wessels’ passionate love for and knowledge of the natural world shines through. The poems are about life’s joyful and also painful journeys, whether physical or spiritual or emotional. The poems are about encounter. And discovery. They are testaments to a life lived to the full. A life filled with deep compassion and wisdom.
Michael Wessels was Associate Professor of English at the University of the Western-Cape. His research explored new ways of reading San oral literature and the politics of indigeneity. His teaching and research interests also included postcolonial and Indian literature, romanticism, travel writing and ecocriticism. He was the author of Bushman Letters (Wits University Press, 2010). He published more than thirty accredited articles and chapters in books in his career. He died tragically in 2018.
“In its fine attention to the spots of time that infuse a life, Michael’s poetry invokes such vibrant and inextinguishable delight in the living world that in reading it I sense again a trace of the brilliance and freedom we received from our beloved friend when he was alive. This makes the book not just a gift and an invitation, but a teaching.” Julia Martin
“These poems are startling in their originality, witty and erudite, introspective yet curious, romantic and surreal, earthy and metaphysical, sometimes all at once. They are a revelation – and revelatory: of the power of language, and of nature, and of how the one opens up the other, to help us understand who we are in the world and the cosmos. With this collection, Michael Wessels enters the canon of South African poetry.” Mark Gevisser
“With a fierce and questing intelligence, Michael Wessels moves us through a range of poetic topographies: emotional and literary, political and ecological. The long poem “Spots of Time” is a kaleidoscopic array of scenes from the secret life of a writer: angry, funny, mordant and tender.” Hedley Twidle
