i may have been born on 27 April 1994 - but i was never born free.

Mjele Msimang

Contemporary poet Mjele Msimang captures something of today's zeitgeist in his poem 'born(e) to the grave'. But what of the past half-century of protest poetry in South Africa, a rich tradition born in response to colonialism, and fed by apartheid and a faltering democracy?

In Years of Fire and Ash: South African Poems of Decolonisation, over fifty years of protest poetry are gathered in a single volume, bringing together some of the most remarkable and thought-provoking poems that have emerged from struggle. The animating impulse behind this collection of old and new voices is 'decolonisation', a term which has regained prominence over the last few years. It allows us to perceive how different South African poets have placed their work in the world, and how that work might relate to the struggle for radical social transformation.