uHlanga is thrilled to announce the December 2025 publication of Kruiper-Crawler, the debut collection of poems by Shane van der Hoven, in a bilingual Afrikaans-English edition.
Kruiper-Crawler is a collection of poetry unlike any other – queer, radical, multi-segmented. It is also a completely new kind of book for uHlanga – Kruiper-Crawler’s thirty-something poems are presented both in Afrikaans and English, the translations differing, interfering with or even contradicting each other.
Kruiper-Crawler sees Shane van der Hoven explores both the sprawling lowveld and the decaying South African city through the metaphor of the Biblical crawler – the grotesque, misunderstood and unfairly maligned creatures of the earth and scrubland.
Infested with irony and literary allusion, Kruiper-Crawler’s exoskeleton may seem tough and spiny. But break through to its soft interior, and find yourself in a world of self-doubt and linguistic uncertainty, a deep love of the unknown, and, at its core, a young poet discovering what kind of creature they might be.
Shane van der Hoven was born in Benoni, raised in the Lowveld, and currently lives in Cape Town. They are a writer, lecturer, translator and editor. Kruiper-Crawler is their debut poetry collection.
Kruiper-Crawler releases on Monday 1 December 2025 in South Africa. Please see the book’s page for more information, en vir meer inligting in Afrikaans.
Review and press copies may be requested from nick@uhlangapress.co.za.
Please note, from October 2025, uHlanga is distributed by Booksite and represented to the trade by Blue Weaver.