Anton Krueger (South Africa)

Anton Krueger's published works include plays, poems and academic essays as well as criticism on theatre, film and books. His unpublished works include dream journals, shopping lists and indecipherable notes scrawled on the backs of envelopes.

From 1997 to 2001, Anton was part of the Poetry Slam crew Bekgeveg and performed monthly at venues all over Pretoria and Johannesburg, as well as at two national arts festivals – the Klein Karoo Kunstefees and Aardklop. Poems from this era were published in an anthology called Six of the Best (1998, Poets Press).

Since then, Anton has taken part in poetry readings at a number of schools and tertiary institutions. Between appearances at these more respectable venues, he has also haunted alternative arenas such as Carfax, the Bohemian, Tequila Sunrise, Bassline and Up the Creek, going on to perform on Julius Makweru's “Word of Mouth” poetry show on YFM. Anton's poems have been published by numerous journals, newspapers and websites.

He has made a number of short experimental films, including a poetry film called Eugene 's Dream of the Absa Building (2005), which is a remix of Eugène Marais' most famous poem, Diep Rivier (1936). Anton was also part of the Afrikaans poetry band Die Plesier Parade which produced an eponymous album in 2007. This recording was described by Woodstock Slim as “raw, yet beautiful and sensitive…going to places in your mind ordinary music never takes you…[The Plesier Parade] will cause a knot in your throat.”

Anton is also well known as a playwright. His plays have been performed all over South Africa, as well as in Australia, England, Wales, America, Chile, Venezuela and Monaco, winning numerous awards along the way. In his capacity as an academic, he has travelled extensively to conferences on philosophy, theatre and literature and has presented papers in Australia, Russia, China, Amsterdam and Finland.

He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Drama, Rhodes University.

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cold

 
my feelings for you remain uncharted,
though i really did try to explore them...
 
like scott of the antarctic, i kept
tramping through your texts, and i
tried to fight the snow – but then
the horizon disappeared, and now
both the map and my left leg have gone...
 
so if i haven't quite been able to
tell you what i'm feeling, believe me,
it's not from lack of trying...
 
but i'm running out of biscuits here,
and now the huskies are dying..
 
all poems' rights remain with the authors