Lady Anne

Throughout Lady Anne there is a rugged, gripping quality to Krogs language, digging deep into the nature of South African life and her own self-challenging relationship to it. There is a substance here, a regard, a responsibility, a creative response which is in keeping with the original nature of the volume when it was first published during the turmoil of the last decade of apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s. This is an extraordinary opportunity to present a writer of tremendous significance to a wholly new realm of readers. -- Stephen Clingman Lady Anne is far from being a collection narrowly fixed in two particular historical moments eighteenth-century colonial life and late 1980s resistance to apartheid. Like all great poems its reach is wide and deep. In this masterly English translation it speaks to new circumstances, in particular renewed attacks by young South Africans on what they register as a still repressive colonial legacy. It also speaks to conditions of power in many other places, including the United States, where issues of belonging, identity, speech and silence, are alive and active. There too writers and thinkers are challenged to address the moral, intellectual and creative challenges these themes generate. Alert to the dangers of complicity and despite her view that it is impossible to hone truth with the pen /to live an honourable life within so much privilege, Antjie Krog engages these difficult subjects with originality and power, in poetic language of great beauty, passion and complexity. -- Ingrid De Kok

Antjie Krog is professor at the University of the Western Cape.

Acknowledgements Preface PART I On board Sir Edward Hughes 23rd Feb. 1797 2.30 South latitude / 17 West longitude / 9th Mar. 1797 The Country of the Lindsays of the Byres (a letter from Fife, 1300, writer unknown) Song written before the birth of Lady Anne Lindsay (1750) two years next month / since my last poetry volume once more / before an empty page Kroonstad March 86 hail Lady Anne Barnard! Cape of Good Hope 4th May 1797 PART II Cape of Good Hope 10th July 1797 Castle October 1797 Castle 12th Oct. 1797 Castle 1798 Auld Robin Gray written by Lady Anne Barnard Gossip from diaries and letters Old Lady Lindsay from Scotland To Windham 1st Nov. 1793 St Wolstans near Dublin 10th Dec. 1793 Dublin 12th July 1794 Kroonstad first state of emergency July 1985 first Christmas weekend under the second state of emergency 1988 II because among mine I feel more and more ill at ease to have or to be gnome parole cape of good hope Lady Anne as guide because a hero needs a bard I think I am the first Lady Anne on Table Mountain PART III (V) The Drup Kelder Tuesday 8th May 1798 Farm of Jakob van Reenen Sunday 13th May 1798 Monday 14th May 1798 Tuesday 15th May 1798 Tuesday 22nd May 1798 St Andrews Fife Scotland 25th Aug. 1987 visit to Balcarres the ballad of Andries Dundas-Dekker Genadendal 10th May 1798 Thursday 31st May 1798 PART IV 20th Nov. 1798 Paradise November 1798 1789 1793 given line: macho men give me the creeps plea to be liberated one day my husband feels I do indeed deserve slaughtering cattle for the Dutch Reformed Church fte Lady Anne at the microwave oven I smell him young behind the breadcutting machine ma will be late III I will always remember strategically I do my best ballad of the power game illness Castle of Good Hope 14th Dec. 1799 Vineyard 14th May 1800 Journal (This sets loose so many images.) Journal (empty lies the interior of the land) Vineyard 16th Feb. 1801 PART III (end) January 1802 new alphabet transparency of the sole the heart is the toughest part of the body Lady Anne Barnard: remembered for her parties in my history book a poem about guilt Gothic House Wimbledon 1806 Wimbledon May 1807 Cape of Good Hope June 1807 Cape of Good Hope August 1807 Wimbledon November 1807 Wimbledon 1808 neither family nor friends epitaph End end Sources About the Poet