My collection embraces different kinds of poetry. Some poems come via my home in Pimville Soweto, the urban sounds and multilingual speech patterns as I move through it. Other poems draw on Sesotho culture and tradition, which still run strongly in my family, and at times, I integrate the different kinds of sounds and associations of Sesotho and English in the same poem.
“u-Grand, Malume? (Zulu slang: are you ok, Uncle?) is dedicated to two uncles who were victims of the antiapartheid struggle. The poems are my way of bringing Jabulani Maswanganye’s spirit back home; he joined Umkhonto weSizwe, went to exile in 1977 and never returned.
The same poet who observes that ‘Everybody is a bridge’, then asks in Zen -fashion,
“Is it me, or is it you?/ are you reflection or projection / or the light that’s shining through?’’ and can also note in a very down-to-earth way, that “If we hadn’t robbed the car washers of their coin/they might not have turned so mean, you know? / Let them earn a little income, bra/ If we’d chiselled our hearts open, tried to see it from the middle/we’d have softened just a little.”
The stories in Once Removed traverse the theatres, artist studios and archives that characterise the world of contemporary art and performance. But they also zero in on the homes, private lives, daily journeys and emotional interiorities of the various characters that inhabit them.
IGoli EGoli is a sociopolitical reading of Johannesburg/iGoli, drawing on its famous, and not so famed, people, places, plants and pronouncements. Featuring the city’s well known and lesser known histories, presents, and words, the medium used is poetry: for its unique ability to tap into the emotional, the subconscious, the unsaid, that underlie many of the city’s motivations.
My collection embraces different kinds of poetry. Some poems come via my home in Pimville Soweto, the urban sounds and multilingual speech patterns as I move through it. Other poems draw on Sesotho culture and tradition, which still run strongly in my family, and at times, I integrate the different kinds of sounds and associations of Sesotho and English in the same poem. 
“u-Grand, Malume? (Zulu slang: are you ok, Uncle?) is dedicated to two uncles who were victims of the antiapartheid struggle. The poems are my way of bringing Jabulani Maswanganye’s spirit back home; he joined Umkhonto weSizwe, went to exile in 1977 and never returned. 
The same poet who observes that ‘Everybody is a bridge’, then asks in Zen -fashion,
“Is it me, or is it you?/ are you reflection or projection / or the light that’s shining through?’’ and can also note in a very down-to-earth way, that “If we hadn’t robbed the car washers of their coin/they might not have turned so mean, you know? / Let them earn a little income, bra/ If we’d chiselled our hearts open, tried to see it from the middle/we’d have softened just a little.” 
The stories in Once Removed traverse the theatres, artist studios and archives that characterise the world of contemporary art and performance. But they also zero in on the homes, private lives, daily journeys and emotional interiorities of the various characters that inhabit them. 
IGoli EGoli is a sociopolitical reading of Johannesburg/iGoli, drawing on its famous, and not so famed, people, places, plants and pronouncements. Featuring the city’s well known and lesser known histories, presents, and words, the medium used is poetry: for its unique ability to tap into the emotional, the subconscious, the unsaid, that underlie many of the city’s motivations.