The Dream in the Next Body

by Gabeba Baderoon

Exploring the distances and silences that may exist between people, this thoughtful collection of poems considers how the details of life sometimes connect to lead to momentary intimacies and connections. It includes poems about love, war, and relationships both distant and close.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Gabeba Baderoon is a South African poet. She is the author of four collections of poetry - The dream in the next body (Kwela/Snailpress, 2005), The museum of ordinary life (DaimlerChrysler, 2005), A hundred silences (Kwela/Snailpress, 2006) and The history of intimacy (Kwela, 2018). Her poetry is included in the anthologies Worldscapes, Ten Hallam poets, Voices from all over and Birds in words, and in journals in South Africa, the United States and Europe, including World Literature Today, St Petersburg Review, Fidelities, New Contrast, Carapace, Chimurenga, New Coin, Karavan, Matter, Illuminations, Sable, Sentinel, Post Scriptum and Meridians. Gabeba is the recipient of the DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Poetry 2005 and held the Guest Writer Fellowship at the Nordic Africa Institute in Sweden in 2005. For 2008, she is the recipient of a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship in Italy and a Writers Residency at the University of the Witwatersrand, funded by Trust Africa. Her debut collection, The dream in the next body, was named a Notable Book of 2005 by the Sunday Independent. A hundred silences was selected for Homebru 2006 by Exclusive Books in South Africa and was short-listed for the 2007 University of Johannesburg Prize and the 2007 Olive Schreiner Prize. Both The dream in the next body and A hundred silences were Sunday Times Recommended Books. The story 'High Traffic', from her collection The museum of ordinary life, appears in Cape Town calling, an anthology of travel writing edited by Justin Fox (Tafelberg, 2007), and 'The history of intimacy' appears in Art South Africa (6.2, Dec. 2007).

http://www.gabeba.com/main/about.htm

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Baderoon's first collection of poetry, and I read it after reading her second. Perhaps I've grown more accustomed to the way she sees and writes the world, but I find this collection to be richer than her second, which is also very good. I think this is sometimes the case: first books being ones that very much need to be written, and often involve a distillation, a coalescence of feeling & experience that is deep & not always paralleled in the next work. Baderoon writes from a point of stillness. Feelings, thoughts coalesce in a single image or experience that ripples and reverberates in the reader. I had thought of posting one of one of my favorites in a strong collection: "War Triptych: Silence, Glory, Love," but it's long. Get the book and read it yourself instead! I insist!

[Sinobia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was gifted this poetry book by Gabeba when we were afforded an opportunity to travel to the United States of America for the Reclaiming the P... Word production this was 2015. This is a form of literature that you take your time with each piece and letting it linger for some time before engaging another. And time can mean months if not years apart. The ending of the book holds poetic accounts of Palestine, given that it was published in 2005, how that account still holds very true today.

This is a beautiful read, offering room to process each poetic entry both visually and emotionally.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful.

[Flume · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is so beautiful... I've got the chance to meet the author and she is just fantastic.