My Landskap Is Myne Verhard: A Topopoetics of Displacement in Ingrid Jonker’s Ontvlugting (1956) and Ek Dryf in die Wind (1966)

Abstract

This article conducts a stylistic analysis of the references to landscape in two of Ingrid Jonker’s poems: Ontvlugting (1956), and Ek Dryf in die Wind (1966). Through the lens of geocriticism, specifically topopoetics, descriptions of the landscape are read as narrative structures that have an affective function within the text. The article aims to demonstrate that these two poems evoke a sense of figural displacement, a feeling of disconnection or lack of belonging, which is established by specific toponyms and images of nature. By oscillating between an intimate attachment with the landscape on the one hand, and a stark affect of estrangement on the other, these poems both perform and embody the concept of displacement.