FALL RISK
Kobus Moolman

November 2024
62pp
200mm x 130mm, with 80mm flaps
ISBN: 978-1-0370-0784-2

“The wind is drying out the darkness,
drying out the smoke
from the hundred fires lit

to show God the way home.”

“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.” – Genna Gardini

In a stark and breathtaking new sequence of poems, one of South Africa's finest poets makes sense of his mortal body.

The poet's disability and ill health lead to distress and confinement, but not silence. In Fall Risk, Kobus Moolman finds a way, through poetic and linguistic experimentation, 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.

Embracing minimalism and arresting natural imagery, Moolman develops not only his lauded and inimitable style, but also new ways in which bodily difference and dysfunction can be put into words. As such, Fall Risk is a significant and original achievement.

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.