Elisa Galgut

Elisa Galgut

The Attribute of Poetry

Elisa will read a selection of poems from The Attribute of Poetry (Modjaji); the collection earned a Commendation by the judges of the 2016 Ingrid Jonker Prize, who described it as a “stunning debut” that "moves with great ease from the personal to the philosophical". The reading will also include some unpublished poems.

Elisa Galgut teaches in the Department of Philosophy at UCT. Her main areas of interest are in literary aesthetics, philosophy of psychoanalysis, and animal rights. She is interested in the ways in which literary form contributes to the development of our emotional and cognitive capacities. She has a PhD in philosophy from Rutgers University and an MA in Creative Writing from UCT.

In addition to publishing her first collection, The Attribute of Poetry, Elisa’s poems have appeared in local literary journals and anthologies. Although she is a philosopher by training, poetry has always been her first love; some of her favourite poets include the Romantics – Keats, Wordsworth and Yeats (the “last Romantic”), Wallace Stevens, and Adrienne Rich, to name a few.