Open submissions in February 2025

uHlanga is excited to announce a new submissions period in February 2025 for original collections of poetry from South African poets, or poets living in South Africa.

We have held open submissions periods before, in 2017 and 2019, which have resulted in the publication of a number of our award-winning titles, including the Ingrid Jonker Prize-winning books Zikr by Saaleha Idrees Bamjee and An Illuminated Darkness by Jacques Coetzee.

Submissions are open from 1 February 2025 to 28 February 2025.

We accept submissions from writers of any experience, whether they have previously published a collection of poetry or not.

Every submission will be read by at least one member of our team of readers. Our readers are highly skilled poetry practitioners.

Submissions must be predominantly written in English or isiXhosa. Poems in other languages may be included in your manuscript, but the majority of the poems should be in either of those languages.

There is no prescribed length for submissions. Most books published by uHlanga contain 20-40 poems, but there are exceptions.

Likewise, there is no formula for success. uHlanga publishes collections of poetry that have substance and structure. Be ambitious about what you write about, but also please remember to keep your submission coherent. Do not simply include every poem you have ever written.

You may find it helpful to read the open letters (one in 2017, one in 2019) that I wrote after our first two open submissions periods. They are a little outdated by now, but may give you more insight into the process and uHlanga's editorial thinking.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Writers must be either a citizen, national, or permanent resident of South Africa. (Refugees and asylum seekers currently in South Africa are also eligible.)

Submissions will only be accepted through our email address – submissions@uhlangapress.co.za.

Your submission should take the form of two attachments: 1) your poems, all compiled in a single .doc or .pdf attachment; and 2) a cover letter, which includes your name and contact information. (We will add your email address to our mailing list. Please let us know if you would not like to be added to our mailing list. You can unsubscribe at any time.)

Please set all text in Times New Roman or a similar typeface, unless your poems require special formatting. (This applies to works of concrete poetry, image poetry, etc.)

Collaborative submissions are accepted, but please note that anthologies or retrospective collections – i.e. collections composed solely of poems published previously in other single-author collections – will not be accepted.

Manuscripts containing poems previously published in magazines, anthologies, journals, or online will be accepted, as long as each previously published poem is acknowledged in the manuscript. Submissions that have already been published – including self-published books – will not be accepted.

We strongly discourage the use of generative AI to compose your poems. Please notify us in your cover letter if you have used AI in your work.

Please note that due to the amount of submissions we receive, we generally cannot give feedback on individual unsuccessful submissions.

Successful writers will be offered our standard contract.

Please note that this is not a competition: we reserve the right to publish none of the manuscripts received during this submissions period. In order to ensure that every submission is treated appropriately, we also reserve the right to respond to submissions in our own time. Most submissions will be evaluated within six months.

There is no reading fee.

Do not submit your manuscript before 1 February 2025 or after 28 February 2025 – it will be discarded without being read.

Any other questions? Mail us!

Poetry NonScenes – out now!

uHlanga is proud to announce the publication of Poetry NonScenes, a new collection of performance poems by newcomers to the poetry scene, compiled in part by the South African Poetry Project (ZAPP).

Fresh new voices! Here is a range of South Africans – school learners, university students, and working professionals – giving their poetic perspective on the modern world.

Compiled from two workshops held in 2024, this collection shows that the poetry of the stage is also of the page, covering an array of subjects and unrestrained by form. Edgy, experimental and passionate, diverse and dynamic reflections on the present moment in South Africa and the world, by those who will write its future.

(Performances from the two workshops, many of which relate to poems within this collection, can be seen at www.poetrynonscenes.com and www.zapp.org.za.)

This anthology was produced in collaboration with ZAPP and Poetry NonScenes, supported by the Johannesburg Holocaust Centre, the External Engagement Committee of the History Department of University College London, the University of Pretoria and the University of South Africa. It includes new performance poems by Shade K. Olugbosi, Dshamilja Roshani, Amanda Majola, Elizabeth Makanha-Dhliwayo, Kiara Braum, Denise Newfield, Rachel Freeme, Katlego Malema, Ivai Nyamutsamba, Sharon Rose, Tshegofatso Masemola, Nicole Best, Katlego Choshi, Delyne Nyasha Madziva, Kekana Phologo, Busisiwe Kgosi, Sabrina Alho, Ntokozo Twala, Ilanit Furman, Tania Nobantu Ngindana, Jolene Raison, Sandisiwe Dlamini, Olive Olusegun, Mpho Mametja, Imange Lobese, Choaro Letsoha, Diyoni Harisinghe, Leya Muthen, and Laeeqa Ebrahim.

Poetry NonScenes is out now, and is available in and to order from good bookstores in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.

Click here to buy a copy from Wordsworth Books in South Africa for R150 excluding delivery.

Like all of our books currently in print, it is also available overseas through the African Books Collective.

For press and review copies, mail nick@uhlangapress.co.za. Distribution in Southern Africa is managed by Protea Distribution. Bookstores (and other retail) may order at cserv@proteadistribution.co.za.

Dayspring named a New Statesman Book of the Year

We were thrilled to find out last week that Dayspring by C. J. Driver, edited by J. M. Coetzee, was selected as Lyndall Gordon’s book of the year for the New Statesman.

Gordon writes:

Dayspring: A Memoir (Karavan Press and uHlanga) is by CJ (Jonty) Driver, a poet and political activist against apartheid. He is a moral being writing with a directness that comes from the soul. This honesty reminds me of the autobiographical fictions of JM Coetzee, who edited this book. The memorable relationships are with interrogators while Driver was imprisoned and with a girl he loved. He’s truthful, too, when it comes to his own failure: casual infidelity. Goodness is hard to convey, but this memoir does so, a respite in a world rent by liars.

See the other New Statesman Books of the Year here.

Announcing Fall Risk by Kobus Moolman

uHlanga is proud to announce the November 2024 publication of Fall Risk, the latest collection from Kobus Moolman.

Kobus is one of South Africa’s best-known and most productive poets, as well as an influential mentor and educator. In this stark and breathtaking new sequence of poems, the poet returns to a familiar theme, but with a new intensity.

Disability and ill health lead to distress and confinement, but not silence. Here Moolman finds a way, through poetic and linguistic experimentation, to make sense of his mortal body, and to express what our bodies cannot say for themselves. Reaching back into our elemental beginnings, contemplating silent rock and running water, we find out something new about how we comprehend the inevitable processes of aging and ailing.

This is Kobus’s third book with uHlanga, after editing the anthology Cutting Carrots the Wrong Way and collaborating with Shubnum Khan on the limited-edition chapbook All and Everything, which was subsequently translated into Danish. uHlanga poet Genna Gardini says of the new collection that “Moolman writes about living, and living in a body, with sharp attention and great beauty. There are poems in this book that you will return to again and again.”

Photo by Val Adamson

Kobus Moolman was born in Pietermaritzburg in 1964, and is currently Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English Studies at the University of the Western Cape.

He has published eleven previous collections of poetry, two collections of plays, and a collection of short stories. Among other accolades, he has won the 2002 Ingrid Jonker Prize, the 2010 South African Literary Award for Poetry, and the 2016 Glenna Luschei Award for African Poetry. He has edited several anthologies including, most recently, Notes from the Body: Health, Illness, Trauma (UKZN Press, 2023) with Duncan Brown and Nkosinathi Sithole. He lives in Riebeek West.

We will have launch events and readings for Fall Risk in early 2025. To be notified of events, as well as all of our new titles, sign up to our mailing list using the sidebar form, or on our About page.