Karina Author, Book, Event

Shari Daya and Megan Hall reading at the Red Wheelbarrow | The Commons

Megan Hall and Shari Daya will be reading to us at The Commons on Wednesday, 4 June at 19:30 SAST.

Megan Hall won the Ingrid Jonker Prize for her poetry collection Fourth Child (Modjaji Books, 2007). Published in various journals since 1995, her work has been anthologised for schools (Worldscapes, 2005) and for university students (TheNew Century of South African Poetry, 2018), amongst others. She also writes short stories. She lives and works in Cape Town.

Shari Daya is a geographer and poet from Cape Town. Her poetry and essays explore the entangled geographies of lineage, memory, place and the body, and her work has appeared in the literary journals Obsidian, Stanzas, New Contrast and the anthologies Africa! My Africa! and I Wish I’d Said… Vol. 5, from the AVBOB Poetry Project. Shari completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town in 2023 and her debut collection of poetry and prose Land | Lines was published by Karavan Press in 2024.

As always, the reading by the featured poet will be followed by an open mic session for poets from the audience. Poets are welcome to read from their own work as well as from the work of a favourite poet.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Date: Wednesday 4 June 2025

Time: 19:30

Venue: The Commons, Surfer’s Corner, Beach Rd, Muizenberg, Cape Town, 7970
phone: 083 799 8294

For more info, including the link to the Red Wheelbarrow complete poetry archive, visit their website. Recordings of the weekly Zoom readings are on their YouTube channel.

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: River Fugue by Sarah Frost

River Fugue is Sarah Frost’s second poetry collection, and continues with the search to find herself through her connections to nature which she explored in her first collection, Conduit. The poems grapple with the persistence of wonder, how one finds it, then loses it, then finds it again. By describing the loss, they evoke it as well, the absence accentuating even more strongly what she yearns for. The collection records a coming to terms with a difficult childhood, and the renegotiation of an adult relationship with the poet’s parents. Writing to forgive, the poet has crafted poems that are transcendent and affirmatory.

In language both luminous and illuminating, Sarah Frost deciphers inner and outer landscapes throughout this strong new collection. Love and grief, loss and forgiveness are mapped and navigated with consummate skill. Rites of passage, whether into poetry or parenthood, come to vivid life. Each change in the weather arrives with the urgency of revelation, and its mystery remains unexhausted at the poem’s end. In one poem, she laments having ‘lost those eyes ablaze with wonder.’ Each poem in this collection demonstrates that she has not.

– Jacques Coetzee

Publication date: June 2025

ISBN: 978-0-6398626-2-0

SARAH FROST was born in 1973 and is mother  to a twenty-year-old son and an eleven-year-old daughter. She lives in Durban, South Africa. She has completed an MA in English Literature at UKZN and achieved a first class pass in a module in Online Poetry at Wits University. She won the Temenos Prize for mystical poetry in the McGregor Poetry Competition in 2021. Her debut collection, Conduit, was published by Modjaji in 2011. She was a prize-winner in the Avbob Poetry Competition in 2023.

Karina Author

Author: Sarah Frost

SARAH FROST was born in 1973 and is mother  to a twenty-year-old son and an eleven-year-old daughter. She lives in Durban, South Africa. She has completed an MA in English Literature at UKZN and achieved a first class pass in a module in Online Poetry at Wits University. She won the Temenos Prize for mystical poetry in the McGregor Poetry Competition in 2021. Her debut collection, Conduit, was published by Modjaji in 2011. She was a prize-winner in the Avbob Poetry Competition in 2023.

River Fugue, Sarah’s second collection, is proudly published by Karavan Press.

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: End & Beginning by Athol Williams

The lone palm shakes its dangling locks
to brush off marauding gales. It tilts
then straightens, a Sisyphus of grit.

But the onslaught persists for years as
intent rips through the flesh of leaves,
snaps the bones of branches.

Cracked bonds run up and down
the tree’s trunk, tall with optimism,
but now bowing to an unseen god.

Then,
every cell lets go, breathless,
the concrete sky falls.

– ‘Hurricane’

‘Mr. Williams became a whistle-blower and was the source of many of the emails and other information that the judicial commission relied on …’ – New York Times

Publication date: June 2025

ISBN: 978-0-6398626-1-3

Kindle: End & Beginning

ATHOL WILLIAMS is an applied philosopher and poet based in the UK. He holds seven degrees including a doctorate from Oxford University, where he currently lectures. He is the recipient of numerous literary, academic and public service awards including two Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Awards and the Mayor’s Medal for Extraordinary Bravery from the City of Cape Town. Athol has been living in exile since 2021 after exposing state capture in South Africa. End & Beginning is his seventh book of poetry.

Karina Author

Author: Athol Williams

ATHOL WILLIAMS is an applied philosopher and poet based in the UK. He holds seven degrees including a doctorate from Oxford University, where he currently lectures. He is the recipient of numerous literary, academic and public service awards including two Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Awards and the Mayor’s Medal for Extraordinary Bravery from the City of Cape Town. Athol has been living in exile since 2021 after exposing state capture in South Africa. End & Beginning, proudly published by Karavan Press, is his seventh book of poetry.