South African author Diane Awerbuck has launched her new poetry collection, Fishwife, published by Modjaji Books. The launch took place on 27 October at Kalk Bay Books in Cape Town, where Awerbuck was in conversation with Charisse Louw, curator of Burning Down the House. An appreciative crowd turned out for the evening. Among them was Mary-Anne Nielsen, who baked on-theme cupcakes for the occasion.

Fishwife is a 64-page collection that Modjaji describes as working in the tradition of Anne Sexton and Antjie Krog. It “nets the strange and ordinary fish of women’s lives.” Each poem sets up a hook and then the escape from it, a structure of catch and release. The publisher promises the truth and humour that Awerbuck’s readers expect, and calls the book “an all-you-can-eat feast for any woman thinking about how she got to dry land.” The title poem draws on the fairy-tale figure of the mermaid who trades her voice for a life with a prince, looking back on that bargain from its far end. Early praise has come from the writer Kate Sidley, who calls the collection “deep and dark and deliciously slippery,” and says its concerns feel both intimate and expansive, personal and mythical.

Diane Awerbuck was born in Kimberley and is a prizewinning author, editor, reviewer and teacher. Her debut, Gardening at Night, won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Africa and the Caribbean) and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. She has since published the short story collections Cabin Fever and Inside Your Body There Are Flowers, the “femme/goth” thriller Home Remedies, and a poetry collection, As Above, So Below. Writing as Frank Owen, she has also produced the pandemic/cowboy science fiction novels South and North. In 2014 she was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing. By her own account she is the great-granddaughter of a fish seller, and she lives in Fish Hoek.

Fishwife is available for R220.00 from Modjaji Books. Congratulations to Diane Awerbuck and Modjaji Books on the launch of Fishwife!