The Man Behind Stanza Poetry
Stanza Poetry is a South African poetry magazine that published written works of poets from all backgrounds between 2013 and 2020. The platform published twenty editions that features poetry from Rainer Maria Rilke, Phelelani Makhanya, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, Helen Moffet and many, many more.
Douglas Reid Skinner was born in Upington, South Africa. He has published eight collections of poems, most recently A Short Treatise on Mortality (uHlanga, 2022). He has translated poems (alone or together with co-translators) from Afrikaans, Hebrew, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Slovenian and Greek). His ten translated books, most recently Gaius Valerius Catullus: Selected Lyric Poems, from the Latin (in association with Richard Whitaker; Crane River, 2020) and Marco Fazzini: Poesie Scelte, Selected Poems 1989–2019, from the Italian (Edizioni Fili d’Aquilone, Rome, 2020) has been well received. Douglas is the editor of Stanzas poetry magazine and an editor (English) and translator for the AVBOB Poetry Project, an annual online poetry competition in the eleven South African official languages.
David Krut Books and Douglas Reid Skinner have long had a collaborative relationship. Skinner has not only launched volumes of Stanzas Poetry at our Cape Town Gallery and Bookstore back in 2017, but also launched his seventh collection of poetry, Liminal, at our shop. In 2015, we also hosted the launch of Italian poet Valerio Magrelli’s, The Secret Ambition, translated to English by Skinner.
Some of our artists’ works have been featured on the cover of Stanza Poetry, such as Issue 16 which featured Universal Archive: Ref 54 from William Kentridge’s Universal Archive Series and Issue 27 which featured Makgebeng (2021) an Oil painting by Heidi Fourie. In a forth-coming volume, you will be able to see the gorgeous collage work of Phumlani Ntuli.
And of course, here at the Blue House we have recently acquired the latest edition of Stanza Poetry, featuring the work of poets such as Patricia Schonstein, Sarah Frost, Tony Voss and many more local established and up-and-coming talents. Issue No. 29 is a lyrical, captivating read from Shari Daya’s short, yet evocative ode to the kitchen, The Houshold Gods, to Chris Chiver’s floral, moving ode to the late CJ Driver, In Memoriam Jonty Driver. The poems featured in this collection traverse a range of emotions and imagery that’s bound to capture the imagination of any who thumb its pages.
