In this poetry collection, Frank Meintjies navigates, to quote one of the poems, “the land, the land, the land” and engages with issues of dislocation, diverse landscapes, nature, attachments to place, and community.
In this, his third collection of poetry, Solomons foregrounds portraits as well as memories of personal shifts, and reflections in the context of a broad national and global milieu ruptured, intermittently, by pandemics and political upheavals. Ultimately, the poetry seeks to forge a creative fulcrum on which to balance this unfolding vision, share insights and sustain engagement.
My collection embraces different kinds of poetry. Some poems come via my home in Pimville Soweto, the urban sounds and multilingual speech patterns as I move through it. Other poems draw on Sesotho culture and tradition, which still run strongly in my family, and at times, I integrate the different kinds of sounds and associations of Sesotho and English in the same poem.
“u-Grand, Malume? (Zulu slang: are you ok, Uncle?) is dedicated to two uncles who were victims of the antiapartheid struggle. The poems are my way of bringing Jabulani Maswanganye’s spirit back home; he joined Umkhonto weSizwe, went to exile in 1977 and never returned.
The same poet who observes that ‘Everybody is a bridge’, then asks in Zen -fashion,
“Is it me, or is it you?/ are you reflection or projection / or the light that’s shining through?’’ and can also note in a very down-to-earth way, that “If we hadn’t robbed the car washers of their coin/they might not have turned so mean, you know? / Let them earn a little income, bra/ If we’d chiselled our hearts open, tried to see it from the middle/we’d have softened just a little.”
In this poetry collection, Frank Meintjies navigates, to quote one of the poems, “the land, the land, the land” and engages with issues of dislocation, diverse landscapes, nature, attachments to place, and community. 
In this, his third collection of poetry, Solomons foregrounds portraits as well as memories of personal shifts, and reflections in the context of a broad national and global milieu ruptured, intermittently, by pandemics and political upheavals. Ultimately, the poetry seeks to forge a creative fulcrum on which to balance this unfolding vision, share insights and sustain
engagement. 
My collection embraces different kinds of poetry. Some poems come via my home in Pimville Soweto, the urban sounds and multilingual speech patterns as I move through it. Other poems draw on Sesotho culture and tradition, which still run strongly in my family, and at times, I integrate the different kinds of sounds and associations of Sesotho and English in the same poem. 
“u-Grand, Malume? (Zulu slang: are you ok, Uncle?) is dedicated to two uncles who were victims of the antiapartheid struggle. The poems are my way of bringing Jabulani Maswanganye’s spirit back home; he joined Umkhonto weSizwe, went to exile in 1977 and never returned. 
The same poet who observes that ‘Everybody is a bridge’, then asks in Zen -fashion,
“Is it me, or is it you?/ are you reflection or projection / or the light that’s shining through?’’ and can also note in a very down-to-earth way, that “If we hadn’t robbed the car washers of their coin/they might not have turned so mean, you know? / Let them earn a little income, bra/ If we’d chiselled our hearts open, tried to see it from the middle/we’d have softened just a little.”