This is a selection of poems by South African dissident poet Breyten Breytenbach, written 1964 to 1977, translated from Afrikaans by Denis Hirson.

The poems are grim, humorous, dreamlike and full of fear. Breytenbach left his native country in 1960 and lived in Paris for years. He was jailed in 1975 when he returned to white-ruled South Africa with a false passport to attempt an act of sabotage on behalf of the dissident African National Congress. The South African government had already labeled him a criminal because of his marriage to a Vietnamese woman, Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien. So-called interracial marriage was a crime then.

This volume was published as part of an award given to Breytenbach in 1978, which provided for a selection of his work to be published in seven European countries. This is the British edition. A few poems are printed in the original Afrikaans as well as an English translation — soos byvoorbeeld / for example:

Afrikaans:
Dames en Here, vergun my om te stel aan Breyten Breytenbach,
die maer man met die groen trui; hy is vroom
en stut en hamer sy langwerpige kop om vir u
'n gedig te fabriseer

English:
Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Breyten Breytenbach,
the lean man in the green sweater; he is devout
and braces and hammers his oblong head
to fabricate a poem for you

I found it ca. 1985 as a college student, having picked up an interest in Afrikaans and the dissident Afrikaner poets while working on an Amnesty International campaign against human rights abuses by the apartheid regime. ( )