Ingrid Jonker

Ingrid Jonker (19 September 1933 – 19 July 1965) (OIS), was a South African poet. While she wrote in Afrikaans, her poems have been widely translated into other languages. Jonker has reached iconic status in South Africa and is often called the South African Sylvia Plath, owing to the intensity of her work and the tragic course of her turbulent life. 2Childhood and early career Jonker was born on a farm in Douglas, Northern Cape. She was the daughter of Abraham Jonker and Beatrice Cilliers. Her parents separated before she was born, and Jonker’s mother moved back home with her two daughters. Jonker’s grandparents moved to a farm near Cape Town. Five years after the move, her grandfather died, leaving the four women destitute. In 1943, when Ingrid was ten years old, Jonker’s mother committed suicide after her descent into depression in the years after her father had thrown his wife and children out of his life in disgrace. Jonker and her older sister Anna were then sent to Wynberg Girls’ High School in Cape Town, where she began writing poetry for the school magazin