Kobus Moolman

Moolman was born in 1965 in a working-class suburb of Pietermaritzburg.{{cite web |title=Kobus Moolman |url=https://taking-liberties.com/2018/05/30/kobus-moolman/ |website=Taking Liberties |access-date=19 February 2025}}{{cite web |last1=Okoro |first1=Dike |title=The Art of Poetry: A Conversation with Kobus Moolman |url=https://www.eclectica.org/v24n1/okoro.html |website=Eclectica |access-date=19 February 2025 |date=Jan-Feb 2022}}{{cite web |title=Fall Risk Kobus Moolman |url=http://uhlangapress.co.za/kobus-moolman-fall-risk |website=uHlanga |access-date=19 February 2025}} He holds a Masters degree in English, an Honours degree in Drama Studies, and a PhD, all from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban.{{Cite web|title=Department of English People |url=https://www.uwc.ac.za/study/all-areas-of-study/departments/department-of-english/people |access-date=2022-10-19 |website=www.uwc.ac.za |language=en}}

He worked as an English teacher, a sub-editor on The Natal Witness,{{cite web |title=Kobus Moolman |url=https://literarytourism.co.za/kobus-moolman/ |website=Literary Tourism |access-date=19 February 2025}} and as head of the Education Department at the Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg.

He then taught creative writing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal for twelve years. In 2019, he became Associate Professor of Creative Writing and the coordinator of the Creative Writing programme in the English department at the University of the Western Cape.

Moolman was born with Spina bifida and since 2010 his work has increasingly focused on disability and the non-normative body.{{cite web |last1=Moolman |first1=Kobus |title=Spina Bifida Poems: The Foot |url=https://www.urevolution.com/blogs/magazine/spina-bifida-poems |website=URevolution |access-date=19 February 2025}}{{cite journal |last1=Moolman |first1=Kobus |title='Whose Body is it, and What is it Doing on My Page?' The Intersections between the Non-Normative Body and Alternative Textual Practices |journal=English in Africa |date=August 2018 |volume=45 |issue=2}}{{cite journal |last1=Jennings |first1=Karen |title=Behind the wall in Kobus Moolman's A Book of Rooms |journal=Tydskrif vir Letterkunde |date=2019 |volume=56 |issue=2 |url=http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0041-476X2019000200003&lng=en&nrm=iso}}

He lives with his wife in Riebeek West.

Moolman's debut poetry collection, Time like Stone, was published in 2000 and won the Ingrid Jonker Prize for a debut collection in 2001.

His 2007 collection, Separating the Seas, won a South African Literary Award in 2010.{{cite web |title=Kobus Moolman wins SALA |url=https://literarytourism.co.za/kobus-moolman-wins-sala/ |website=Literary Tourism |access-date=19 February 2025}}

In 2010, he published the collection Light and After. Published in the same year as Tilling the Soil, his anthology of work by South African writers living with disabilities, Light and After is his first collection to directly address his own spina bifida, and the relationship between the body and experimental poetics which would become central to his later work.{{cite web |title=The language of getting on with life |url=https://witness.co.za/archive/2010/07/21/the-language-of-getting-on-with-life-20150430/ |website=The Witness |access-date=19 February 2025 |date=21 July 2010}}

His next collection, Left Over, continues his examination of embodiment and living with spina bifida, as well as questions of self and nation during and after apartheid.{{cite web |title=Luschei Prize Finalist Feature: Kobus Moolman, Left Over |url=https://africanpoetrybf.unl.edu/luschei-prize-finalist-feature-kobus-moolman-left-over/ |website=African Poetry Book Fund |access-date=19 February 2025 |date=11 November 2014}} It was shortlisted for the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry.

In 2013, he won the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award for his poem "Daily Duty".{{cite web |title=Kobus Moolman wins Sol Plaatje award |url=http://news.artsmart.co.za/2013/10/sol-plaatje-poetry-anthology.html |website=artSMart |access-date=19 February 2025 |date=21 October 2013}}

His 2014 collection, A Book of Rooms, won the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry.{{cite web |last1=Oduku |first1=Richard Oduor |title=A Poet That More People Should Know: A Review of A Book of Rooms by Kobus Moolman |url=https://wawabookreview.com/a-poet-that-more-people-should-know-a-review-of-a-book-of-rooms-by-kobus-moolman/ |website=Wawa Book Review |access-date=15 February 2025 |date=19 August 2016}}{{cite web |title=South Africa’s Kobus Moolman Wins 2015 Glenna Luschei Prize for A Book of Rooms |url=https://africanpoetrybf.unl.edu/south-africas-kobus-moolman-wins-2015-glenna-luschei-prize-for-a-book-of-rooms/ |website=African Poetry Book Fund |access-date=15 February 2025 |date=18 January 2016}}{{cite web |title=PEN SA Member Kobus Moolman Wins 2015 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry |url=http://pensouthafrica.co.za/pen-sa-member-kobus-moolman-wins-2015-glenna-luschei-prize-for-african-poetry/ |website=PEN South Africa |access-date=15 February 2025 |date=19 January 2016}} The collection examines Moolman's personal experience of growing up as a white South African during apartheid, and of living with Spina bifida.{{cite web |title=Moolman honored by African Poetry Book Fund |url=https://news.unl.edu/article/moolman-honored-by-african-poetry-book-fund |website=University of Nebraska-Lincoln |access-date=19 February 2025 |date=21 January 2016}}{{cite web |last1=Ferris |first1=Jim |title=Book Review: The Book of Rooms (Kobus Moolman) |url=https://wordgathering.syr.edu/past_issues/issue33/reviews/moolman.html |website=Word Gathering |access-date=19 February 2025}}

Moolman's subsequent work has continued to address disability and the non-normative body.{{cite web |last1=Mogami |first1=Gaamangwe |title=The Poetry of Embodiment: A Dialogue with Kobus Moolman |url=https://africaindialogue.com/2017/02/03/the-poetry-of-embodiment-a-dialogue-with-kobus-moolman/ |website=Africa in Dialogue |access-date=19 February 2025 |date=3 February 2017}}{{cite journal |last1=Moolman |first1=Kobus |title=Fourteen Critical Questions |journal=Review of Disability Studies |date=2022 |volume=18 |issue=1 and 2}}{{cite web |last1=Moolman |first1=Kobus |title=REMEMBERING THE BODY: An Exploration of the Centrality of Embodiment in My Own Work and Other South African Poets |url=https://wordgathering.com/past_issues/issue28/reading_loop/moolman2.html |website=Word Gathering |access-date=19 February 2025}}

Moolman has written plays for radio and for stage. He won a BBC African Radio Theatre Award in 1987 and the Macmillan Southern African Playwriting Award in 1991. In 2000, he won a Rewards for Playwrights Initiative prize for his plays Missing, Presumed Dead and Miss Dolly.

In 2003, Moolman's play Soldier Boy was the runner-up in the BBC African Performance radio drama competition and was broadcast on the BBC World Service in April that year.{{cite web |title=African Performance |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/performance.shtml |website=BBC World Service |access-date=19 February 2025}}{{cite web |title=Kobus Moolman |url=https://www.african-writing.com/seven/kobusmoolman.htm |website=African Writing Online |access-date=19 February 2025}}

The script for his stage play, Full Circle, won the jury prize at the 2004 PANSA Festival for New Writing.{{cite web |title=Full Circle |url=https://esat.sun.ac.za/index.php/Full_Circle |website=Encyclopaedia of South African Theatre and Performance |access-date=18 February 2025}} The play premiered at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 2005 and was later staged in Pietermaritzburg and Johannesburg, and as part of the Southern African theatre season at the Oval House Theatre in London in 2006.{{cite web |last1=Brown |first1=Peter |title=Full Circle |url=https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/reviews/full-circle |website=London Theatre |access-date=19 February 2025}}

In 2007, his play Stone Angels was awarded joint first prize in the PANSA Festival.{{cite web |title=Kobus Moolman Interview |url=https://wordgathering.com/past_issues/issue4/interview/moolmaninterview.html |website=Wordgathering |access-date=19 February 2025}} The play premiered at the 2008 National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and was subsequently performed at the Square Space Theatre in Durban.

Moolman was the founding editor of poetry journal Fidelities, and edited the journal from 1995 until 2007. He also edited poetry titles for the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press from 2000 to 2009.

In 2010, he edited Tilling the Hard Soil, an anthology of work by South African writers living with disabilities, published by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

In 2017, he published his first collection of short stories, The Swimming Lesson and Other Stories.{{cite web |title=The Swimming Lesson and Other Stories by Kobus Moolman |url=http://pensouthafrica.co.za/the-swimming-lesson-and-other-stories-by-kobus-moolman/ |website=PEN South Africa |access-date=19 February 2025 |date=20 April 2017}}

• Time like Stone (2000)
• Feet of the Sky (2003)
• Separating the Seas (2007)
• Anatomy (2008)
• Light and After (2010)
• Left Over (2013)
• A Book of Rooms (2014)
• All and Everything (2019)
• The Mountain behind the House (2020)
• Fall Risk (2024)

• The Swimming Lesson and Other Stories (2017)

• Blind Voices (2007)

• Full Circle (2003)
• Stone Angels (2007)

• Tilling the Hard Soil: Poetry and Prose by South African Writers Living with Disabilities (2010)
• Cutting Carrots the Wrong Way (2017)
• Notes from the Body: Health, Illness, Trauma with Duncan Brown and Nkosinathi Sithole (2023)

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Category:Living people

Category:Afrikaner people

Category:South African people of Dutch descent

Category:21st-century South African poets

Category:South African male poets

Category:21st-century South African male writers

Category:People with spina bifida