Arthur Nortje

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

Nortje was born in Oudtshoorn and went to school in Port Elizabeth, where he was taught by the acclaimed 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.

The small headstone reads "Arthur Nortje, 1942-1970, South African Poet."

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.

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.

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.

In 2017, South African poet, Athol Williams located Nortje's grave at section B3, Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford.