Stuart Payne was born and lives in Cape Town, where he’s volunteered for the Off the Wall poetry group and Stanzas magazine. He studied English at the University of Cape Town, later taking French classes at the Alliance française du Cap and working in animal rescue.
Having developed OCD and depression as a child, he frequently writes about memory and loss, both personal and historical, and the distance between minds, both human and animal.
Conversely, other poems concern the pleasures of the moment and imagination.
His poetry is metrical, and he's interested in the adaptability of poetic forms to modern life.
His first book, Voices from Another Room, was published in 2018 by Douglas Reid Skinner’s Crane River Press, distributed by Nick Mulgrew's uHlanga.
He was the winner of the 2022 New Contrast National Poetry Prize for his poem “Words for Dia! kwain”.
Visit him at https://stuartpaynepoetry.com/