It All Begins is a collection of poems in English by over fifty South African poets (and some Zimbabweans), with several contemporary translations from /Xam, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Xitsonga and Zulu. All the poems were published in the poetry journal New Coin between 1989 and 1999. These poems were written over a period which included the brutal last years of apartheid, the release of Mandela, the country's first democratic elections, and the disturbing trends of the post-Mandela era. During this time the violence of previous decades continued, although in different forms, while the poor became poorer. For poets, it was a time of innovation. Music, street rhythms, and international influences were opening up the vocabulary. Groundbreaking poems were being written - many of them unnoticed when they were first published. Collected in this anthology, they demonstrate the aesthetic diversity and truth-telling power of South African poetry. Poets include Lionel Abrahams, Tatamkhulu Afrika, Lisa