ISBN 9781928215509
Pages 106
Dimensions 198 x 129mm
Published 2017
Publisher Hands-On Books, South Africa
Format Paperback

The Love Sheet

by Barbara Fairhead, Jacques Coetzee

The title should have warned me. On reading the title poem, I realise any of the poems is a gateway into this passion with compassion, into a garden whose fragrances colour every sound lovers make when words have to cope. Make the lovers poets, see how each facet is etched, each jewel worked and polished. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. 

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Reviews

Fairhead and Coetzee have produced a collection that is distinguished by its crafting as well as its beauty. Their voices gather resonance in conversation, until the poems reveal a hunger for shared experience, and a receptiveness to the intimacies of each moment. Reading these poems at one sitting is akin to stumbling onto a recital by two very accomplished soloists—perhaps in a clearing, in a forest. This is a brave and beautiful book, and the cumulative impact of the poems is nothing short of astonishing.

Eduard Burle

"From the blind to the seeing, from the seeing to the blind …  this volume is a compelling declaration of love and radiance, and transformation."

Petra Müller

About the Authors

Barbara Fairhead

Barbara Grenfell Fairhead is an artist, writer, poet and lyricist. She was born in the United Kingdom in 1939 and has lived most of her life in South Africa. After her first visit to New Mexico in the early 1990s it became her second home. She made many extended visits over a period of twenty years, staying in her casita close to Black Mesa. Many of her poems and haiku were inspired by that landscape, as well as some of her prose writings, and her trilogy of novels. She lives in Cape Town now. Her most recent books are Rio Abajo Rio/River Beneath River – a poetically written, post-creation myth and KIN, her collected poems.

Jacques Coetzee

Jacques Coetzee, born in 1972, matriculated from the Pioneer School for the Blind in Worcester. He has worked as a busker at the Cape Town Waterfront, and has tutored English literature to first- and second-year university students. In 2002 he obtained a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town, and in 2018, he and Barbara Fairhead published a joint anthology of poems, The Love Sheet. He currently lives in Cape Town, where he is a singer-songwriter in the band Red Earth & Rust. 

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