Deep South Publishing

Cover Art: Lien Botha, 'Piero di Cosimo'

"Glimpses of women in overalls" and "Pocket money" by Karen Press from 'Heart's Hunger: Selected Poems' (Deep South, 2024)

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9/9

i never mock the drunken anger in my neighbourhood
it's the wine we drank on fridays that made us happy
the girls made us happy too
they also gave us children we never wanted or trusted
("violent seed")

8.
'skeptical erections' is not one for euphemisms, with a tone that is at times full of invective, attesting to Allen Ginsberg's motto: 'First thought best thought':

7.
banging at the rotten door with their heavy wet breasts
they would come out with a wig under one armpit
and looking for the other shoe
("the gate")

6.
i wanted to run away wholeheartedly
but kept coming back to my falling gate
decorated with thorns and worms
as people watched wishing it could fall on my feet
i had to fix it with my twisted hands
for queens and whores kept it squealing and screeching

5.
The pleasures of life are expressed with disdain, as if joy is a shame, a betrayal to the misery they have gotten so used to. Sapeta writes in uninhibited Bukowski-like spontaneous prose:

4.
The poems are situated in the context of township life and its relentless hardships. The speaker(s) are devoid of stature, praise or prestige. The poems are un-capitalised, making the characters, the speaker(s), and all else, unimportant, with no apparent worth.

3.
Divided into two sections, the book covers themes of heavy drinking, casual sex, death, abuse, and a sense of doom, all written through the eyes of self-disparaging men who have uneasy relationships with women and their bodies.

2.
The unambiguous book title captures the essence of the poems, and sets the scene for what is to come.

1.
Punchy, searing and fearless, 'skeptical erections' is laced with wry humour and wrath, often expressed as thought, or internal monologue, with a diction that is dense with emotion, yet nonchalant enough to be free of sentiment.

Mxolisi Dolla Sapeta 2021 © Karl Schoemaker

Cover Art: Mxolisi Dolla Sapeta, 'Echoes 3'

From the review by Dimakatso Sedite of 'skeptical erections' by Mxolisi Dolla Sapeta, for 'New Coin', 2022

For the full review, see the 'skeptical erections' page on the Deep South website:
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YouTube video by Shifty Media Official Channel Kalahari Surfer feat. LESEGO RAMPOLOKENG - Heavyweight

"Heavyweight" by the Kalahari Surfers featuring Lesego Rampolokeng from the Shifty Media Official Channel on YouTube, 2014

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7/7
By the end, the pretending has been cast aside like a heap of old clothes as the protagonist stands before us shivering. Can we bear so much reality? Would we not rather have at least some of these events occur out of sight, in the wings?

6.
To reach this point, he shifts radically beyond that point at the beginning of the book where “he learns how/ much easier it always is to pretend than to admit a painful truth”.

5.
If this means that preoccupation with self is placed before relationship, the result is nonetheless no mean feat, for we are presented with the rare sight of a man overcoming, word by simple yet hard-earned word, the temptation to play the pinioned, impotent role of the victim.

4.
Yet his ultimate target, against the shifting drama of each room, is always himself, in intimate combat, while the limelight glaring into his eyes is often held up to him by a woman.

3.
In ‘The Room of Rural Teaching’, there is

Excitement that he is finally out of his parent’s home and can do /
what he wants for
the first time in his life Pride that he is helping those less
fortunate than himself
And fear that they will murder him in his sleep

2.
Under examination in each room he insists on his faults, feeding fresh details to the prosecution while never calling on a witness for the defence. He does this not without self-deprecating humour, not without a paradoxical assessment of his wider surroundings.

1.
Through room after room we follow him, ‘The Room of Maybe’, ‘The Room of Family Holidays’, ‘The Room of What He Excels At’, ‘The Room of the First Time’, ‘The Room of Promises’, ‘The Room of Self-Pity’, ‘The Room of Hunger’, ‘The Room of Absolute Whiteness’.

Kobus Moolman 2010 © Val Adamson

Cover Art: Andries Gouws, 'Grahamstown residence room with red curtains'

Review by Denis Hirson of 'A Book of Rooms' by Kobus Moolman, for 'New Coin', 2015

For the full review, see the 'A Book of Rooms' page on the Deep South website:
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Cover Art: Photograph by Michael Jaspan

"Hoshe ngwana" and "Stella" by Isabella Motandinyane from 'Complete Poems' (Deep South, 2016)

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5/5
Joan Metelerkamp is both confident of her art and humble in the face of its challenges. Courage, candour, craft and humanity are characteristic of this poetry, for which we can all be grateful as we look forward to the next volume.

4.
[...] In its threads of creative awareness, 'Under dark under branches' has much to say about poesis itself: from “wait forget all the old thoughts that wake you at night” to “I write what I like”.

3.
The mode may be described as “free verse”: the disposition of the words on the page is clearly determined by thought and feeling.

2.
(The reviewer benefited—as, he hopes, does this review—from hearing the recording of the Red Wheelbarrow Zoom launch of the collection, at which the poet introduced, read from and answered questions on her work.)

1.
Joan Metelerkamp’s tenth volume is a single linked poem that unfolds in five sections, with each section flowering into a number of distinct parts, each of which can also be viewed as an independent poem.

Joan Metelerkamp 2013 © Peter Metelerkamp

Cover Art: Rosamund Stanford

From the review by Tony Voss of 'Under dark under branches' by Joan Metelerkamp, for 'Stanzas', 2025

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Cover Art: Mongezi Ncaphayi, 'Come on, now - 2013'

"Seafront" by Kelwyn Sole from 'Walking, Falling' (Deep South, 2017)

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8/8
But, despite this clear, though uncomfortable, vision, a real challenge comes when the persona shares his night experience with his wife the following morning: “she gawked at me and chuckled: / ‘poets are dreamers’”.

7.
The ghost retreats, relieved, apparently having read the person’s thoughts to the effect that he never wronged him nor held grudges against him.