Joan Helene Hambidge (born 11 September 1956 in Aliwal North, South Africa) (the English surname notwithstanding), is an Afrikaans poet, literary theorist and academic.

She is a prolific poet in Afrikaans, controversial as a public figure and critic and notorious for her out-of-the-closet style of writing.

[1] Although Hambidge says she discovered her muse when she was young, it was while she was a lecturer at the University of the North, Limpopo Province, South Africa, that she started to blossom as a writer.

Other translations have been done by Jo Nel, fellow poet and close friend Johann de Lange, and Charl JF Cilliers.

Hambidge is famous for her iconoclastic and irreverent approach to literary traditions in Afrikaans and cultural idols and for her re-examination of previously taboo subjects.