Mirror and Water Gazing

Kelwyn Sole has made his mark in South Africa as a poet whose unrelenting protest against complacency is matched by a constant exploration of form. In Mirror and Water Gazing he widens these poetic concerns. There are poems here which contemplate betrayal, baffled encounters, and deluded love. Some are poems of vulnerability and doubt, searching for adequate ways to mirror selves in language. Sole is an acute listener, and in found poems and angry satires he documents South Africans' current obsession with greed, consumerism and display. Mirror and Water Gazing is the mature work of a poet whose poems invariably urge us to become more awake.