Multilingually inflected, Klara du Plessis’ first collection of poetry explores the multiplicity of self through language, occupying a liminal space between South Africa and Canada. A sequence of visceral, essay-like long poems, du Plessis’ writing straddles the lyrical and intellectual, traversing landscapes and fine arts canvases. Ekke is a watershed debut from one of Canada’s most exciting young voices.

Klara du Plessis is a poet, artist-scholar, and literary curator. Her debut poetry collection, Ekke, won the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and her critical writing received Arc Poetry Magazine’s 2022 Critic’s Desk Award. She is known for her contributions to long-form and translingual poetics, and writes in and between English and Afrikaans. Welcoming collaborative formations, her narrative poem, Hell Light Flesh, was adapted and produced as a mono-opera film with composer Jimmie LeBlanc, and premiered at the International Festival of Films on Art in 2023. Klara develops an ongoing series of experimental and dialogic literary events called Deep Curation, an approach which posits the poetry reading as artform. Post-Mortem of the Event is her fourth poetry collection.

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Du Plessis’ lines “eke out a meaning for [the] self,” a self existing between Afrikaans and English. Philosophical and tectonic, vulnerable and vivid, Ekke’s long poems ultimately become “ululations in the throat.”

Oana Avasilichioaei