Ockert Greeff's chapbook, A Mass Choir of Little Things, won the 2024 Vallum Chapbook Award. The manuscript was also a finalist in the 2024 The Wolfson Press Chapbook Prize, where the judges noted, “These patient, mesmerically paced memory poems are sure-footed and quietly gripping. The sensibility is singular—strange. The basic argument is: There may not seem to be much going on here, but in fact EVERYTHING is going on. It’s a hard argument to make convincing, and this poet does it masterfully.” -- Wolfson Press Editorial Board, 2024 Ockert is a South African Canadian poet and drummer inspired by the early traditions of storytelling and drumming. He uses language and chorus as a thin membrane to connect to scenes and tellings, often stripped down to archetype and rooted in his Afrikaans mother tongue. In some sense, his work is Afrikaans, but written in English. Born in Namibia and raised in a small town in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa, he earned his BA Hons. in Afrikaans Literature before settling in Johannesburg, where he was co-founder and drummer of the Afrikaans cult band Die Brixton Moord en Roof Orkes. In Montreal, Canada, he has recorded with underground bands such as Light Bulb Alley, Sawtooth, and Death Drive. His poetry drumming work can be found online and has been shown at various poetry film festivals, including the Raleigh Film & Art Festival and the Small File Media Festival at Simon Fraser University. His poems have placed with honors among the Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards and as a finalist with New Ohio Review and Vallum Poetry Awards. Other poems have appeared or are forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Literary Review of Canada, Permafrost, Ons Klyntji (South Africa), South Florida Poetry Journal, Thimble Literary Magazine, and others.
I play drums and I write.
