Burnt Offering   by Joan Metelerkamp

Burnt Offering is Joan Metelerkamp’s seventh collection of poems. The title comes from a poem in a cycle that embodies the labours of the medieval alchemists – heating and burning, transformation of passionate intensity, the search for an enduring element. In the process malignant doubt is burnt off, and what takes its place is trust in the everyday:

take this day, here, take it
all its clarity, all its gold –

Like all of Metelerkamp’s work, these generous poems draw on and weave together, with this poet's distinctive energy and passion, the details of family and rural life, dreams, landscapes and journeys:

the chainsaw in the valley;

the chainsong of canaries, cisticolas, sombre bulbul, sunbirds,
despite the cloud cover;

the script of named fynbos; the clear horizon, the still sea;

the discomfort of day’s plans, narratives, narratives.

About the author
Joan Metelerkamp is the author of seven books of poems: Towing the Line (1992), Stone No More (1995), Into the day breaking (2000), Floating Islands (2001), Requiem (2003), Carrying the Fire (2005), and Burnt Offering (2009). She lives with her family in the Southern Cape.

Available from:
Email: modjaji.books@gmail.com