Afrikaans poetry: new voices

Abstract

I focus on the new voices in Afrikaans poetry since 2000: poets who have published their first collections of poetry during this period. The texts are discussed according to gender-specific categories as an attempt to undermine a predominantly heteronormative academic discourse. Binary categories are used to substantiate this approach, and following Spivak, I employ these categories for the sake of the academic argument. I also argue that the sociopolitical and economic realities of the postcolonial moment in South Africa (1994) are now relegated to the margin and there is a strong tendency to write poems that deal with issues such as identity and positioning of the self within the global world order. The ongoing intertextual rivalry with the more established poets within the Afrikaans literary discourse is also examined.