Seminar by Jacomien van Niekerk: “The poetry of I.L. de Villiers (1936-2009)”

He published six volumes of poetry and was also a well-known minister in the NG church, acclaimed writer of religious books and editor of the women’s magazine Sarie and later of the Sunday paper Rapport.

Various themes and phenomena characterise De Villiers’s poetry. Many poems are about the office of pastor and about the church, about theology, the mysteries of faith and religious doubt. Other poems are about identity (including language) and the tension between belonging and alienation, and about the poetic act. In his elegiac poems topics like old-age, death and youth are pondered, and place is a central concept, as can be seen in many poems that were written about a specific city of region.

 This paper will attempt to briefly take stock of De Villiers’s six volumes of poetry and to describe his contribution to (religious) poetry in Afrikaans.