Botsotso

21/12/2025

An incredible turnout for yesterday’s launch of Returning Signs! 🎉

Thanks to everyone who joined us and to Sean MacGinty and Frank Meintjies for a morning of great poetry and discussion 📚

20/12/2025

Today! Join us 📚🥳

15/12/2025

REVIEW: Kelwyn Sole's 'What is Owed?'

In the latest issue of The Johannesburg Review of Books, Kevin Goddard reviews Kelwyn Sole's new collection of poetry.

Kevin Goddard reviews What is Owed? by Kelwyn Sole—a poet’s summing up of a life dedicated both to verse and to activism in South Africa. What is Owed? Kelwyn SoleBotsotso, 2025 In 'How to Live. What to Do', published in Ideas of Order in 1936, Wallace Stevens offered a kind of solution to

11/12/2025

✨BOOK LAUNCH: RETURNING SIGNS ✨

Botsotso invites you to the Cape Town launch of Returning Signs by Sean MacGinty!

Join us at the Cape Town Central Library for a reading and discussion featuring fellow Botsotso poet Frank Meintjies on 20 December.

10/12/2025

Sean MacGinty talks about his debut collection of poetry ‘Returning Signs’ (Botsotso, 2025) as well as his life as a South African poet in Argentina.

09/12/2025

✨ANNOUNCING: RETURNING SIGNS BY SEAN MACGINTY ✨

Botsotso is thrilled to announce the publication of ‘Returning Signs’, the debut collection of poet Sean MacGinty.

🗣️“Sean MacGinty’s debut collection contains poems that have a strong rhythmic flow, a vivid sense of place, in particular the evocations between South Africa and South America, and some penetrating comment about the way people live their lives. The poems communicate a very personal overview of his own experiences and insights, with subtlety, clarity and controlled emotion. It is an accomplished debut; a very unified though varied collection with great lyricism and descriptive power.” — Michael King

📖ABOUT THE POET

Sean MacGinty has worked in the education NGO sector in South Africa since 2014. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town, and has had poetry published in New Contrast: The South African Literary Journal, New Coin, LitNet, Daily Maverick, Hotazel Review as well as the Latin American Literary Review. In 2023, one of his poems was shortlisted for South Africa’s National Poetry Prize. He has had poetry written in Spanish anthologised in Antología Malvinas, Identidad y Cultura, at the Museo Malvinas e Islas del Atlántico Sur in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Returning Signs is his debut poetry collection.

📍If you’re in Cape Town on the 20th, join us for the launch at Cape Town Central Library! More details to follow.

02/12/2025

This week in Johannesburg! 🎤📚

19/11/2025

"This collection sings the sentience of all creatures, houses, Styrofoam cups, and examines the natural world, family, relationship, connection, and their opposites. In Sole’s world, land and sea are in constant communion, they are fixed in dialogue with fluidity."

Phillippa Yaa De Villiers on Kelwyn Sole's 'What Is Owed?' for LitNet.

"With less of his characteristic reserve and more rampant enjoyment, Sole shapeshifts in this collection, appearing as an old man, as a trogon, as a bee, as the sun, as the beloved – with a sideways wink between author and reader."

18/11/2025

Botsotso celebrates its authors Siza Nkosi, David Mann, and Frank Meintjies for being recognised at this year's SALA - SA Literary Awards! Congratulations to you all 🏆

By Lehlohonolo Lehana. The 20th edition of South African Literary Awards (SALA) lived up to its stellar reputation of celebrating […]

05/11/2025

An evening of poetry, music, and solidarity

Chimurenga, New Contrast Literary Journal, The Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Collective, and Botsotso invite you to a night of reflection and resistance through word and sound.

Featuring:
Gabeba Baderoon · Jamal Mahjoub · Tauriq Jenkins · Ari Sitas · Yvonne Owuor · Pralini Naidoo · Jim Pascal Augustin · Kelwyn Sole · Laila Lalami · Leila Aboulela · Liesl Jobson · Lisa Julie · Shari Daya · Dinaw Mengestu · Steph Carolus · Susan Kiguli · Zeenit Saban-Jacobs · Petros Isaakidis · Sarah Lubala

🎶 With surprise musical guests

📅 Friday, 7 November 2025
🕖 19h00 for 19h30
📍 Chimurenga Factory, 157 Victoria Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town

The Germans genocided the Hereros and the Jews
The Turks the Armenians
The Boers the iXiam
The Hutus the Tutsis
And right now the Israelis are genociding Palestinians

05/11/2025

🗣️Tomorrow in Johannesburg 🗣️

Catch Botsotso’s Allan Kolski Horwitz reading alongside Mak Manaka and Stacy Hardy at Dibukafé in Braam ☕️📚

5-6PM. See you there!

03/11/2025

This week in Cape Town and Johannesburg 🗣️

Catch Kelwyn Sole reading from ‘What is Owed?’ at Tokai Library with The Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Collective on Wednesday 5 November 📚

And join us at The Forge for Pitika Ntuli’s ‘Palestine in my Heart’ on Friday 7 November.

Get both collections via Botsotso: https://botsotso.org.za/store/ 🔗