Strange Fruit   by Helen Moffett

Strange Fruit is a courageous debut with a remarkable range in theme and tone, from the nostalgic to the comedic to the bawdy, and to the angry, the melancholic and the steadfast and comforting. It will delight, shock, anger, induce laughter, shock more, delight more. And make you blush. It’s a full range. There are poems of brutal, honest self-scrutiny – the emotional heart of the collection being a series of poems on the ageing body, loss of love and infertility – and there are poems that capture landscapes with imagist skill and the botanist’s detail. And there is pleasure for the reader in rhythm and musicality, that promises returns on re-reading – I am still entranced by

outside,
the resident owls warming up
for half an hour’s counterpoint
of notes soft as down and deep
as the darkness catching the trees;

where the serial enjambment produces intriguing harmonics, and then a dying fall. Image, rhythm, tone, poetry.

- Rustum Kozain

About the author
Helen Moffett is a freelance editor, author and academic. She has lectured as far afield as Trinidad and Alaska, but calls Cape Town home. Teaching poetry at the University of Cape Town led her to compile a poetry anthology for Southern African students, Seasons Come to Pass. Strange Fruit is her first collection of her own poems.

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