Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: BEAT ROUTES by Justin Fox

“Always restless and inquisitive, Justin Fox fashions his poems out of travel adventures of one kind or another, exploring a panorama of places, people and occasions. At the same time, he is always experimenting with how much he can bend language to his expressive will as he surfs along on waves of words, stopping to share moments, observe what is salient before moving on to the next port – and poem – of call. It makes for a thoroughly enjoyable mix.”

— DOUGLAS REID SKINNER

“We have been aware – the way we are conscious of an essential dimension of being human in this environment with these seas bordering this continent, as we would be of sentinels in the night scouting for daybreak and the dawning distances – of Justin Fox exploring and lighting up the life-trip we are embarked upon here in this forever Neverness. Even so, we are drawn in again and again, and are awed – beautifully so, searingly so, searchingly so, along lines of song – to where we know we belong. What a celebration to be invited to partake of the riches! ‘I am all of these and none of them. I am the land.’ How lucky we are to enter this volume of giving us back to ourselves in the poems of this fellow-being!”

— BREYTEN BREYTENBACH

ISBN: 978-0-620964-83-8

Publication date: November 2021

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JUSTIN FOX is a poet, travel writer, photographer and former editor of Getaway magazine. His articles, poems and photographs have appeared internationally in a number of publications and he is the author of twenty books, including The Marginal Safari, Whoever Fears the Sea, The Impossible Five and The Cape Raider. Justin is the winner of two Mondi Awards for journalism and the Patricia Schonstein Poetry in McGregor Award. Beat Routes is his debut poetry collection.

Justin was a Rhodes Scholar and received a doctorate in English from Oxford University after which he was awarded a research fellowship at the University of Cape Town, where he taught part time for two decades.

Author photograph: Revel Fox

Karina Author, Book, Review

Eckard Smuts reviews AN ISLAND by Karen Jennings for the Daily Maverick

Sometimes, she says, when we are afraid that our own narratives are at risk of being erased, we stop investigating history, and risk becoming stagnant in the process. That is why we have an obligation to keep on interrogating the past as fully as we are able to. If there is a lesson to be had in An Island (I hasten to add that, to the story’s credit, it doesn’t trade in easy morals), it is that this obligation never comes to an end. We cannot, like Samuel, retreat to our little enclaves of memory and build walls to keep out the world. Even those of us battling ghosts from the past — and maybe especially those of us battling ghosts from the past — need to keep our noses to the wind, to the strange new forms of relation blowing in from distant shores.

Daily Maverick
Karina Author, Book, Event

POETRY IN MCGREGOR: KARAVAN POETS

Karavan Press Poets Dawn Garisch, Stephen Symons and Justin Fox read from and discuss their poetry collections

MC: Karina M. Szczurek (Karavan Press)

Sunday, 21 November: 9-10:30AM

@ Caritas | Temenos

Caritas at Temenos Cnr Voortrekker and Bree St., McGregor, Western Cape

Book your ticket here: R50