BLOOD SKIN BONES is a poetry collection that covers diverse sub themes, from nostalgia to world politics to the admiration of the natural world to deep self-introspection. But the dominant packaging theme of this collection is mortality. Mortality of the body, the mind and the soul.
“A daily writing practice over the past two years has led to my writing on a wide range of themes. I suspect that someone pours a little poetry dust into my ear each night as I sleep because I wake up with a few lines of rhyme from the dream world to tinker with from the first moment of the day.”
Written in an intensely lyrical mode with very strong elements of African narrative poetry, this collection is imbued with the spirit of the imbongi, in that its language is lush and overwhelming, incantatory and rhythmic in its power, Nelson Ratau incorporates social happenings with the larger than life, the heroic.
volcanoed/ηφαιστειωθής is a poetry collection that attempts to capture a contemplative journey undertaken through the simultaneous use of English and Greek languages. Each double poem is not a translation of one another but rather the product of a process in which one version informs the other, and the two poems intertwine and evolve alongside each other. The collection weaves together themes of grief and loss, experiences of otherness, and the exploration of place and location, including the complexities of migration and self-exile.
Much of the backbone of the manuscript was written during the pandemic, and then gradually refined over the following years. Many of the ideas had been stirring in me for some years before, based on experiences from having lived in South America, and then from my work in South Africa’s education NGO world, where one project in particular allowed to travel extensively around the country and all nine of its provinces.
BLOOD SKIN BONES is a poetry collection that covers diverse sub themes, from nostalgia to world politics to the admiration of the natural world to deep self-introspection. But the dominant packaging theme of this collection is mortality. Mortality of the body, the mind and the soul. 
“A daily writing practice over the past two years has led to my writing on a wide range of themes. I suspect that someone pours a little poetry dust into my ear each night as I sleep because I wake up with a few lines of rhyme from the dream world to tinker with from the first moment of the day.” 
Written in an intensely lyrical mode with very strong elements of African narrative poetry, this collection is imbued with the spirit of the imbongi, in that its language is lush and overwhelming, incantatory and rhythmic in its power, Nelson Ratau incorporates social happenings with the larger than life, the heroic. 
volcanoed/ηφαιστειωθής is a poetry collection that attempts to capture a contemplative journey undertaken through the simultaneous use of English and Greek languages. Each double poem is not a translation of one another but rather the product of a process in which one version informs the other, and the two poems intertwine and evolve alongside each other. The collection weaves together themes of grief and loss, experiences of otherness, and the exploration of place and location, including the complexities of migration and self-exile. 
Much of the backbone of the manuscript was written during the pandemic, and then gradually refined over the following years. Many of the ideas had been stirring in me for some years before, based on experiences from having lived in South America, and then from my work in South Africa’s education NGO world, where one project in particular allowed to travel extensively around the country and all nine of its provinces.