History of Intimacy

Gabeba Baderoon is the author of three poetry collections, including A hundred silences, a finalist for the University of Johannesburg Prize and the Olive Schreiner Award, and The Dream in the Next Body, which received the Daimler Chrysler Award for South African Poetry. She is an associate professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and African studies at Penn State University.

Baderoon’s poetry . . . uses a gentle eye to consider all that is intimate between us, and in doing so, renders these quiet and still moments as sacred. In The History of Intimacy, she has rendered our most painful histories through an unobtrusive lens. She has written them with care, and left space and silence around them, so they (and we) may have room to breathe. In the act of listening, we render them sacred, and might begin to heal." —Toni Giselle Stuart, The Johannesburg Review of Books". . . Baderoon’s poetry does not shy away from attempting to forge an understanding, on a broader political scale and in the intimacy of our souls." —Karina Magdalena Szczurek, LitNet"South African poet Gabeba Baderoon’s fourth collection of verse impresses with its concision of language and clarity of ideas. With subjects ranging from the hidden tableaus of her personal history to the meaning and value of poetry, Baderoon’s verses invite the reader to join her on an exploration of history, culture, and the universal qualities of the subjective experience." —World Literature Today

• Poetry for BeginnersTell Me What You SeeA Prospect of BeautyCloserSurfaceFocal LengthAxis and RevolutionRain fall on the abstract worldPort Jackson, Cape TownThe Port CitiesThe River CitiesEverything We've SaidDivingConcentrationPromised landKoggelbaaiThe Blue of the Night before We LeftGhost TechnologiesSong of the Husband 2The FlatsBlack ButterfliesGreen pincushion proteasEffective ImmediatelyThe Edges of ThingsHangklip*The WordNo NameNot YouI saw you walk toward somethingThe History of IntimacyAnsweringThe Law of the MotherCardinal PointsGlossary