uHlanga is happy to announce the publication of The Mushroom Summer of Skipper Darling by Tony Voss. One of South(ern) Africa's most astute critics of poetry over the decades, Voss is finally publishing his debut collection at the age of 83. The book is brought out by our friends and collaborators at Crane River, and has been produced and distributed by uHlanga.

This is a collection that accomplishes that rare thing in poetry: of being an immediate pleasure even as it demands re-reading and slow contemplation. With classical form and meter meeting modern sensibility and local image, The Mushroom Summer of Skipper Darling fills a gaping absence in South African letters, and will kickstart an appreciation anew of a strong, steady and significant influence on this country’s literature.

Voss was born in Swakopmund in 1935. He was educated at St George’s Grammar School, Rhodes University, and the University of Washington, Seattle. His interests were formed by his Southern African upbringing, his parents’ faith, and imagination – from songs of the First World War and swing, to Yeats’s Oxford Book of Modern Verse. He taught English in universities until he retired from the service of the then University of Natal in 1995.

The book is available to order from most worthwhile bookshops in SA and Namibia.