John Eppel

In July 2010, Carol Rumens selected Eppel's poem Jasmine as the poem of the week on the Guardian newspaper web site:

It comes back to me, this August,
now that the jasmine is blooming
and the air is stilled by woodsmoke;
how they cried freedom, and how I
knew their song.

In a new poem The Dog-meat Vendor –  Eppel reads it on video here – and forthcoming in Eppel's 20th published work, O Suburbia from Weaver Press, he notes wryly about poetry and life:

This villanelle has just one agenda:
appreciate what poverty begets.
His cuts, half rotten, are sweet and tender.
Salutations to the dog-meat vendor.

Eppel’s poems have appeared in many anthologies, journals and websites, including six poems in the Penguin Anthology of South African Poetry.  His poem, ‘Vendor and Child’ was chosen by New Internationalist for their collection, Fire in the Soul, the best 100 human rights poems from across the world over the last 100 years.

The poet’s first novel, D G G Berry’s The Great North Road, won the M-Net prize and was listed in the Weekly Mail & Guardian as one of the best 20 South African books in English published between 1948 and 1994.  His second novel, Hatchings, was short-listed for the M-Net prize and was chosen for the series in the Times Literary Supplement of the most significant books to have come out of Africa. His other novels are The Giraffe Man, The Curse of the Ripe Tomato, The Holy Innocents, Absent: The English Teacher, Traffickings, and (awaiting publication) The Boy Who Loved Camping.

A bibliography of Eppel's work at     African Books Collective