I Wish I'd Said: Volume 4

Life under lockdown has been a dramatic event. The fourth annual AVBOB Poetry Competition coincided with the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Yet the competition attracted a record number of entries. An excess of 41 000 poems were entered by writers between 7 and 98 years of age.

Six specially commissioned poems by established poets in each official language (66 poems with English translations) appear in this volume, as well as the three winning poems in each of South Africa’s 11 official languages (33 poems with English translations). To round out the collection, those 99 poems are completed by 4 contemporary Khoikhoi poems.

As voices from the past reach into the present, so the voices in this anthology will stretch into the future, when they will be read as a reflection of this terribly interesting time.

These words of beauty and balm by some of South Africa’s finest poets will offer readers a definite taste from diverse voices. The poems on these pages will comfort and console the bereft. Immerse yourself and be inspired, as these flights of imagination uplift your spirit.