Arthur Nortje (1942 - 1970) was a South African poet.

He was born in Oudsthoorn , and went to school in Port Elizabeth, being taught by the acclaimed writer Dennis Brutus. After school he studied at the University College of the Western Cape and later received a scholarship to Oxford University in the UK.

He emigrated to Canada in 1967, teaching in Hope, British Columbia and Toronto but returned to Oxford in 1970 to work on a doctorate. He died shortly afterwards of a drug overdose.

His poems were published posthumously in the collections Dead Roots (1973) and Lonely Against the Light (1973). They deal extensively with his own personal alienation, being classified as coloured in apartheid South Africa, and his experiences of exile.