Gert Vlok Nel is a South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

n poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

. He studied English, Afrikaans and history at Stellenbosch University

Stellenbosch University

Stellenbosch University is a public research university situated in the town of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Other nearby universities are the University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape....

 and worked as a guide, a bartender and a watchman. He has published one collection of poems, Om te lewe is onnatuurlik (To live is unnatural), for which he received the Ingrid Jonker Prize

Ingrid Jonker Prize

The Ingrid Jonker Prize is a literary prize for the best debut work of Afrikaans or English poetry. It was instituted in honour of Ingrid Jonker after her death in 1965....

. His countryman Etienne van Heerden

Etienne van Heerden

-Biography:Van Heerden was born in 1954, six years after the official advent of apartheid. His mother was an English speaking mathematics teacher. His father, an Afrikaans speaking merino stud breeder, farmed the family farm in the Karoo...

 praised Vlok Nel as 'one of our finest talents'.

Om te lewe is onnatuurlik was followed by a CD, om beaufort wes se beautiful woorde te vergeet, an autobiographical sketch and a full-length show with poems, songs and visual material, which he has performed all over South Africa. Some people say he is a travelling bard with a guitar, comparable to Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

 and the renowned South African troubadour Koos du Plessis

Koos du Plessis

Jacobus Johannes du Plessis was a prominent South African singer-songwriter and poet, colloquially known as Koos Doep...

. He himself says he admires Tom Waits

Tom Waits

Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...

 and Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...

 (‘Tom Waits, he messes about, just like me’).

In his début collection, Vlok Nel paints a personal portrait of his childhood in Beaufort West

Beaufort West

Beaufort West is a town in the Western Cape province in South Africa. It is the largest town in the arid Great Karoo region, and forms part of the Beaufort West Local Municipality, with 37 000 inhabitants in 2001....

, a rural part of South Africa with a predominantly poor-white population. His father was a railway employee.

Vlok Nel writes his lyrics in an unusual and innovative Afrikaans, comparable with, if anything, the language experiments of Antjie Krog.

The Dutch poet Gerrit Komrij

Gerrit Komrij

Gerrit Jan Komrij is a Dutch poet, novelist, translator, critic, polemic journalist and playwright. From 2000 to 2004 he was the Dutch Dichter des Vaderlands .-Biography:...

included eight of Vlok Nel's poems in his anthology of South African poetry in Afrikaans De Afrikaanse poëzie in 1000 en enige gedichten.

Gert's re-released album entered the Dutch charts at number 59 in 2006.