Poetry for Beginners

Gabeba Baderoon is a poet and scholar. She is the author of three poetry collections, The Dream in the Next Body (2005), The Museum of Ordinary Life (2005) and A Hundred Silences (2006). A selected volume of her poetry translated into Swedish, The Silence Before Speaking, was published in 2008. The Dream in the Next Body was named a Notable Book by the Sunday Independent and was a Sunday Times Recommended Book. A Hundred Silences was a finalist for the 2007 University of Johannesburg Prize and the 2007 Olive Schreiner Award. Baderoon is the recipient of the Daimler Chrysler Award for South African Poetry, and has held fellowships at the Nordic Africa Institute and Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and Writer's Residencies at the University of Witwatersrand and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study. She teaches Women's Studies and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University, and is an Extraordinary Professor of English at Stellenbosch University. Her forthcoming collection is titled Axis and Revolution.