A Ruthless Fidelity: Collected Poems of Douglas Livingstone edited by Malcolm Hacksley and Don Maclennan

ISBN: 0868522325

Ad Donker Publishers (2004)

Hard Cover, DJ, 563 pages

Livingstone was born in Malaya but came to South Africa as a war refugee, at the age of tem, in 1942. A scientist by profession, with a doctorate in microbiology, he was a poet by conviction, compulsion and passion. His subjects range right across the spectrum of human endeavour from the natural world to the landscape to politics, religion and satire, human relations and love poetry. A ruthless fidelity - the collected poems of Douglas Livingstone, compiled and edited by Malcolm Hacksley and Don Maclennan, comprises the poems from Livingstone's previously published collections, the other poems he published in journals and magazines across the globe, and a selection of the poems he completed, but which have never been published, and which are housed in the manuscript archives of the National English Literary Museum in Grahamstown. The collection is introduced in an essay by Don Maclennan and concludes with an Afterword by Malcolm Hacksley. The title includes a biographical chronology, a textual introduction, notes on the poems, an index of titles, as well as an index of first lines.