The History of Intimacy: Poems

by Gabeba Baderoon

Gabeba Baderoon’s The History of Intimacy is a tender, tangled account of the heady days in South Africa following Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. This award-winning poetry collection portrays the innovative forms of music, kinship, and even self in “the new, intricate country / we understood was impossible.” Gazing at black-and-white photos from back home, a woman who has moved to the United States realizes, “Memory doesn’t come to me straight.” Conversations overheard in line at the DMV reveal the complex nature of identity. When asked to name the color of her skin, a girl confides, “It was the first time I admitted / I loved the skin of white boys.” The poems are also light-hearted. In “Ghost Technologies,” about romance in the early days of the internet, the speaker recalls “when we loved each other on dial-up.” The collection begins and ends with poems on writing, paying tribute to poets such as Keorapetse Kgositsile and Archie Markham who taught her that “a border / is a place of yielding or refusing to yield / for after refusal might lie a new country.”
 
Born on the coastal shores of Port Elizabeth, Baderoon is one of South Africa’s most acclaimed literary voices. In The History of Intimacy —originally published by Kwela Books—she crafts resonant poems about a writer’s beginnings, love across boundaries, and “how not to be alone.”

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published June 15, 2021

About the author

Gabeba Baderoon is a South African poet. She is the author of four collections of poetry - The dream in the next body (Kwela/Snailpress, 2005), The museum of ordinary life (DaimlerChrysler, 2005), A hundred silences (Kwela/Snailpress, 2006) and The history of intimacy (Kwela, 2018). Her poetry is included in the anthologies Worldscapes, Ten Hallam poets, Voices from all over and Birds in words, and in journals in South Africa, the United States and Europe, including World Literature Today, St Petersburg Review, Fidelities, New Contrast, Carapace, Chimurenga, New Coin, Karavan, Matter, Illuminations, Sable, Sentinel, Post Scriptum and Meridians. Gabeba is the recipient of the DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Poetry 2005 and held the Guest Writer Fellowship at the Nordic Africa Institute in Sweden in 2005. For 2008, she is the recipient of a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship in Italy and a Writers Residency at the University of the Witwatersrand, funded by Trust Africa. Her debut collection, The dream in the next body, was named a Notable Book of 2005 by the Sunday Independent. A hundred silences was selected for Homebru 2006 by Exclusive Books in South Africa and was short-listed for the 2007 University of Johannesburg Prize and the 2007 Olive Schreiner Prize. Both The dream in the next body and A hundred silences were Sunday Times Recommended Books. The story 'High Traffic', from her collection The museum of ordinary life, appears in Cape Town calling, an anthology of travel writing edited by Justin Fox (Tafelberg, 2007), and 'The history of intimacy' appears in Art South Africa (6.2, Dec. 2007).

http://www.gabeba.com/main/about.htm

Reviews

[Sarah Werkmeister]

ok so- i have not read all of these poems (i know i'm really embarrassed) simply because of the timing of school & extracurriculars, but of the ones that i have read i have immensely enjoyed it. but not to worry because i feel incredibly pressured to finish it because my classmate in my class BOUGHT ME the book so that I could have the author sign it when we met her at a panel for class (off-topic but maybe the kindest thing anyone has every done for me)- this was after days and days of trying to get my hand on a library copy, which i couldn't even get signed (bc it would be a loan lol)
so, this book was given to me out of the kindness of a friend, and it's been signed by the author- don't worry i will read all of these poems many times to appreciate it :))
thank you madison!!
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finally got around to reading this whole collection, and I immensely enjoyed myself. reading this made me inspired to write again/write more (especially as taking breaks between poems to people watch in the cafe i was in) i am really grateful i got to meet baderoon, and have a signed copy of the book. it also makes me very happy that my receiving of this book comes from my own story of intimacy and kindness

[Michelle McGrane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gabeba Baderoon and I lived in South Africa at the same time, which meant I was lucky to attend several of her readings and interview her for a literary website, catering largely for Afrikaans literature, called LitNet. 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑯𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝑰𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒚 is an exquisite collection which won the 2019 University of South Africa Main Prize and a 2020 Humanities and Social Sciences Award.

"Baderoon’s poems are finely crafted objects of art, delicately shaped and containing rich emotion and thought,” describes Kwame Dawes, author of 𝑪𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝑩𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒔: 𝑨 𝑻𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕. “She is building a powerful body of work, rooted in Africa and reaching line after line to the wider world."

This collection of elegant and beautifully crafted poems ensures Baderoon's place among the most talented voices in South African poetry. Read it!

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𝑷𝒐𝒆𝒕𝒓𝒚 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝑩𝒆𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒓𝒔

In the evening poetry class for beginners
a girl in a thick brown coat she doesn't take off

breathes in deep
and risking something says fast

my boyfriend's in prison

I'm here to find out
how to write to him through the bars

and someone laughs

and she pulls herself back into her coat and from inside looks past us

and the next week doesn't come back

and I think of her for years and what poetry is

I think this is my origin
where poetry is risk, is betrayal

and the memory of the first question how not to be alone

From 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑯𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝑰𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒚: 𝑷𝒐𝒆𝒎𝒔

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𝑨𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑨𝒖𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒓

Born on the coastal shores of Port Elizabeth, Gabeba Baderoon is one of South Africa’s most acclaimed literary voices.

She is the author of three poetry collections, including 𝑨 𝒉𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒔𝒊𝒍𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒔, a finalist for the University of Johannesburg Prize and the Olive Schreiner Award, and 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑵𝒆𝒙𝒕 𝑩𝒐𝒅𝒚, which received the Daimler Chrysler Award for South African Poetry. 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑯𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝑰𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒚, her third collection, won the 2019 University of South Africa Main Prize and a 2020 Humanities and Social Sciences Award.

Gabeba is an associate professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and African studies at Penn State University.

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A huge thank you to @NetGalley and @nupress for an DRC of 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑯𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝑰𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒄𝒚: 𝑷𝒐𝒆𝒎𝒔 by Gabeba Baderoon.

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Get a table of contents of poems, poems are up to two pages - so good if you do like longer poems. Really nice movement of poems.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful gorgeous collection read through so quickly because each and every poem cut through. Baderoon has such a unique writing style I love !!