In your absence

In Your Absence is a poetry collection that refuses to resolve. Written and composed by Cape Town creative director and author Jay Badenhorst, the book moves through grief, guilt, masculinity, and the particular weight of loss that doesn't announce itself cleanly. The 74 poems are accompanied by 20 original artworks and six music compositions, each accessible via embedded Spotify QR codes, making this as much an experience as a book. The collection doesn't offer comfort. It offers witness. The poems sit with what most writing flinches from: the silence left by someone's absence, the grief men are not supposed to carry, the guilt that outlasts the loss itself. Formally ambitious and visually arresting, In Your Absence extends the raw personal territory of Badenhorst's memoir Beautiful Monster into a new register, one that is quieter, more fragmented, and harder to look away from. Published under 47sundays. For readers of Nick Flynn, Sharon Olds, and Claudia Rankine.