About the Book
This selection of poems from the anthology of the same name was written over 30 years, from 1972 to 2000, an impressive and important body of work, reflecting on the diversity of the anti-apartheid struggle. The poems are a passionate and creative journey with a gifted and incisive poet, on South Africa’s history of apartheid and resistance, and the hopes and dreams for social justice. Matthews pens the brutality, separation, imprisonment and oppression of apartheid, and the rise of freedom’s child. His poems are honest and timeless and reflect the poet’s commitment to humanity, to freedom and liberation. Included in this abridged re-publication are the original forewords by Jeremy Cronin and Neville Alexander.
About the Author
James Matthews, poet, writer and publisher, has produced five books of poetry, a collection of short stories, a novel and an anthology of poetry, which he edited. Most of his work was banned under the apartheid government and was translated and published overseas. For 13 years he was denied a passport and was placed in detention from September to December 1976. James Matthews waged a struggle against this agenda with the one weapon the jailers couldn’t take away from him – his ability to turn words into poems.
In 1980 Matthews participated in the Frankfurt Book Fair, and in 1982 he participated in the Cultural and Resistance Conference in Gaborone. He was awarded a Fellowship at Iowa University, U.S.A., was the founding member of the Vakalisa Art Association and founding member and Patron of the Congress of South African Writers.
James Matthews is the first black person to have established a publishing house (BLAC Publishing House 1974 -1991). The publishing house closed in 1991 due to constant harassment by the apartheid government. Matthews is the recipient of numerous local and international awards, including the Woza Afrika Award (1978), Kwaza Honours List – Black Arts Celebration, Chicago, U.S.A.(1979), the Freeman of Lehrte and Nienburg, Germany (1982), more recently the National Order of Ikhamanga and Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of the Western Cape and the University (Currently Known as) Rhodes.
