Gert Vlok Nel

Who is Gert Vlok Nel?

Gert Vlok Nel is a South African poet. He studied English, Afrikaans and history at Stellenbosch University and worked as a guide, a bartender and a watchman. He has published one collection of poems, Om te lewe is onnatuurlik, for which he received the Ingrid Jonker Prize. His countryman Etienne van Heerden praised Vlok Nel as 'one of our finest talents'.

Om te lewe is onnatuurlik was followed by a CD, om beaufort wes se beautiful woorde te vergeet, an autobiographical sketch and a full-length show with poems, songs and visual material, which he has performed all over South Africa. Some people say he is a travelling bard with a guitar, comparable to Bob Dylan and the renowned South African troubadour Koos du Plessis. He himself says he admires Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen.

In his début collection, Vlok Nel paints a personal portrait of his childhood in Beaufort West, a rural part of South Africa with a predominantly poor-white population. His father was a railway employee.

Vlok Nel writes his lyrics in an unusual and innovative Afrikaans, comparable with, if anything, the language experiments of Antjie Krog.