Arthur Nortje

Arthur Kenneth Nortje (16 December 1942 – 11 December 1970^[1]) was a South African poet.

Arthur Nortje
Born	(1942-12-16)16 December 1942 Oudtshoorn, Union of South Africa
Died	11 December 1970(1970-12-11) (aged 27)
Nationality	South African
Education	University College of the Western Cape
Alma mater	Jesus College, Oxford
Genre	Poetry

Life

Nortje was born in Oudtshoorn^[2] and went to school in Port Elizabeth, where he was taught by the writer Dennis Brutus. After school he studied at the University College of the Western Cape and later received a scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford in the UK, where he obtained a BA degree.^[3]

He emigrated to Canada in 1967, teaching in Hope, British Columbia and Toronto but returned to Oxford in 1970 to work on a doctorate. He died shortly afterward of a drug overdose. In 2017, South African poet, Athol Williams located Nortje's grave at section B3, Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford. The small headstone reads "Arthur Nortje, 1942-1970, South African Poet."^[4]

His poems were published posthumously in the collections Dead Roots (1973) and Lonely Against the Light (1973). They deal extensively with his own personal alienation, being classified as coloured in apartheid South Africa, and his experiences of exile. In 2000, the University of South Africa Press in Pretoria published Anatomy of Dark: Collected Poems of Arthur Nortje. His works have been dealt with extensively in Ralph Pordzik's Die moderne englischsprachige Lyrik in Südafrika 1950-1980: Eine Darstellung aus funktions- und wirkungsgeschichtlicher Perspektive and in an article entitled: "No Longer Need I Shout Freedom in the House: Arthur Nortje, the English Poetical Tradition and the Breakdown of Communication in South African English Poetry in the 1960s", published in English Studies in Africa 41.2 (1998) 35-53.

Works

• Dead roots: poems, Heinemann, 1973, ISBN 9780435901417
• Dirk Klopper, ed. Anatomy of dark: collected poems of Arthur Nortje, University of South Africa, 2000
• Craig W. McLuckie, Ross Tyner, eds. Arthur Nortje, Poet and South African: New Critical and Contextual Essays, Unisa Press, University of South Africa, 2004, ISBN 9781868882595