Nortje was born in Oudtshoorn[2] and went to school in Port Elizabeth, where he was taught by the writer Dennis Brutus.

[3] He emigrated to Canada in 1967, teaching in Hope, British Columbia and Toronto but returned to Oxford in 1970 to work on a doctorate.

In 2017, South African poet, Athol Williams located Nortje's grave at section B3, Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford.

They deal extensively with his own personal alienation, being classified as coloured in apartheid South Africa, and his experiences of exile.

In 2000, the University of South Africa Press in Pretoria published Anatomy of Dark: Collected Poems of Arthur Nortje.