The title of Peter Sacks's third book of poems has double reference. It is the name of a military camp in the province of Natal where Sacks served in the South African Army. He spent his early years in the military in South Africa although details are lacking.
Peter Sacks draws upon his life as an expatriate as well as upon his early years in South Africa, including his time spent in the military, to create a remarkably powerful book of poetry. At turns meditative and narrative, Sacks is unafraid to lay bare in vivid imagery his sense of both personal and historical losses, and his commitment to the works of mourning and of cultural repair. Even the love poems emerge from this book with the impress of both bittersweet aspiration and regret.
Born in South Africa in 1950, he fled his native country during the apartheid era to avoid fighting racial wars in the army e is a professor of English at Harvard University.
Sacks, originally from South Africa (a heritage that colors much of his poetry), first came to the United States as an exchange student in Detroit when he was 17. Intending to become a physician, Sacks developed his love of poetry as an undergraduate at Princeton in the early 70s, and went on to study at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and take a doctorate at Yale in English.