uHlanga is proud to announce the February 2027 release of Understorey, the sixth collection by Cape Town poet Fiona Zerbst.
In Understorey, Zerbst travels across continents, eras and memories in search of truths about both the heart and the world we live in. (She also painted the cover! What a talent!)
Moving between the deeply personal and the globally resonant, these poems range from the salt-tinged South African coast to the steppe of post-Soviet Ukraine, where Zerbst lived briefly in 1995. Loss and the persistence of grief sit alongside the consolations of nature, art and human connection.
Her command of form and language takes in migrant butterflies and lingering family ghosts, the distortions of apartheid and landscapes torn apart by war.
Luminous and finely made, Understorey is a meditation on time and survival, and on the music that outlasts us.
Photo by Shamiel Adams
Fiona Zerbst was born in Cape Town in 1969. She is the author of five previous collections of poetry, most recently In Praise of Hotel Rooms (2020).
She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Pretoria, was runner-up for the 2023 New Contrast National Poetry Prize, and received the 1990 AA Life Vita/Arthur Nortje Memorial Award.
Her poems have been published and anthologised internationally, and some have been set to music by the composers Hendrik Hofmeyr and Juliet Wootton. She has run her own writing and editing business for two decades, and lives and works in Cape Town.
Launch details will follow closer to publication. Please check our social media or subscribe to our newsletter for updates.
For press and review copies of this book or others, please mail nick@uhlangapress.co.za.