The Weight of...

The Weight of… is the third and final book in Adriaan van Vuuren’s poetry trilogy -  a deeply personal collection about everything we carry, everything we lose, and everything that changes us along the way.

Written over four years, the book moves through the weight of life, love, memory, grief, identity, mental health, heartbreak, healing and becoming. At times tender, at times confronting, the poems capture those thoughts and emotions we often struggle to explain - the ones that linger long after a moment has passed.

But The Weight of… is more than a collection of poetry.

Throughout the book, selected poems are followed by thoughtful writing exercises and prompts, inviting you to step beyond the page and into your own story. To pause. To remember. To question. To write. To give language to the things you may have been carrying. 

Some pages ask you to look backwards. Others encourage you to imagine what comes next. Together, the poetry and interactive elements create a reading experience that feels personal - one that changes depending on who is holding the book and what they bring to it.

Within these pages are poems about love in its many forms, the people we become through loss, the fragility of the mind, childhood memories, relationships, identity, regret, hope, transformation, and the strange beauty of simply being alive.

The Weight of… does not promise to have all the answers. Instead, it creates space for the questions.

For the things you have survived.
For the people you still think about.
For the versions of yourself you have outgrown.
For the love you have known, lost, or are still waiting to find.
And for everything you have not yet found the words to say.

Whether this is your first encounter with Adriaan’s work or you have followed the journey from the beginning, The Weight of… can be read entirely on its own. It is both the closing chapter of a trilogy and an invitation to begin something personal of your own.

Because sometimes the words that move us most are not the ones written for us.

They are the ones that help us find our own.