David Mann, author of Once Removed, interviews award-winning South African poet Zeenit Saban-Jacobs about her debut collection of poetry Inside an Eyeball (Botsotso, 2025).

David Mann: Let’s start with the title: Inside an Eyeball is an evocative and intriguing title for a collection. It also hints at the surrealist thread that runs throughout. Can you tell me a bit about your choice of title and how it frames the collection?

Zeenit Saban-Jacobs: Inside an Eyeball alludes to a few themes within the collection. The surrealist/oneiric aspect, as you have highlighted, is not pure automatism. Sufism is another. Also, the spiritual belief that we are part of a universe that is experiencing itself through us – borrowing from panpsychism and aspects of Buddhism. The ‘eyeball’ here is that of the universe, literally watching us/experiencing us. Consider the following line from the poem, Inside an Eyeball – “but we are on the inside of such a design, keeping our very own blind spots in check…” – meaning, it is impossible for us to comprehend because of the weakness of our minds (by default). Another line from Inside an Eyeball inspired by the concept of a conscious and almost “cunning” universe, “it hears with our ears, tastes with a million tongues. To feel and breathe is a pulsing strip of dust, omnipotence is hiding in a black room. To enjoy all even in death”

The collection refuses a single way of seeing or line of thought, instead vacillating between various influences and understandings. How have you reconciled these influences in the collection? Is poetry a useful way of making sense of conflicting ideas?

Poetry, to me, has never been a ‘linear’ endeavour. It isn’t a straight line – poets are often experiencing many things all at once. Here is something to ponder on: we are currently living in the metamodern age (zeitgeist) – think of a pendulum oscillating between two schools of thought, postmodernism and modernism. Reconciliation, in this case, would be limiting since two things (or three, or four) can be true at once. So, my position is not to reconcile the ‘conflicting’ ideas, but to allow them to unravel naturally – to structure meaningful and in- depth poems that will engage the reader on many levels.

In the absence of a rhyme scheme, the poems adopt a montage-like form that you’ve referred to as ‘feeling states’. Could you expand on this?

Yes. I am a metamodern writer, so we tend to move away from rhyme scheme poetry. The concept of ‘feeling states’ is not poetry in the absence of deeper meaning or an underlying message – it is about viscerality and imagery to create a “mental scar” in the minds of the reader through an ‘economy of words’, i.e., a reliance on metaphor and figurative language (in certain instances) for the purposes of ‘showing’ and not ‘telling’

Can you tell me a bit about the process of writing this book?

Sure. It is a confrontation with your naked self – to be unafraid, to write like no-one is watching, and to believe in the power of your words. To listen to those who offer sound advice, and to listen to the silence within. Inside an Eyeball challenged me, but it was also an invitation into the self, one I gladly accepted – one that has transformed me.

The idea of the ‘stranger’ is present throughout the collection. You dedicate Inside an Eyeball to ‘the strangers all over the world’ and there is a poem titled ‘Stranger’ as well. What’s your interest in the strange or the unknown, and how has it shaped the collection?

The concept of the stranger in this case can be found in Sufi teachings – sufi expressions feature in some of the poems in the collection. The stranger is one who is always searching for his/her beloved (God/a higher power/essence of the spirit) in others, i.e., they are searching for their mirror, if you will. And feeling strange or isolated is because such a journey is about the abandoning of materialism (and suppressing the lower self) in order to gain spiritual wealth and knowledge. Such a person, a seeker of spirituality and God will always feel like a stranger in our highly materialistic and mostly Machiavellian world. In the poem, ‘Stranger’, the wanderer moves across the desert searching for a love that is beyond her/his reach – under the sweltering heat there are a few mirages and a hissing lappet-faced buzzard for company. But the wanderer’s entire journey is actually a dream. See the line, but first, the encroaching moon will drape her evening dress over misty-eyes and a reclining day, dimming curtains of salt and skin, confining us to a dream. In some texts pertaining to spiritual matters, it is believed that sleep allows for one to travel across many astral planes. I am playing with this concept here. It is after all a poem about love, and whether the reader chooses to interpret it as a physical love or spiritual love is their choice.

You work as a Film, Television, and Digital/New Media Lecturer. How much does your engagement with, and teaching of, these forms of media inform your writing? Do the worlds of film and TV bleed into your prose, inform your narratives?

My experience with poetry is very different when compared to New Media, Screenwriting, Film, and Post-production. Screenwriting is the antithesis (inverse) of poetry and prose. The screenplay (highly technical) is at the centre of a film, so compartmentalising or removing myself from all things film related – practice and procedure – was imperative for this book. Of course, one could argue that everything has the potential to be a poem and thus the filmmaking process seems like an obvious inspiration, but my experience with Inside an Eyeball was unlike any other creative experience. It demanded disruption/madness, and this in my opinion is antithetical to the principles of conventional screenwriting and filmmaking. However, there is one aspect of the filmic process I can highlight as an influence, and that is method acting technique. I’ve not acted in any films, nor do I plan to – I am not an actress by any means, but the concept of ‘getting into character’ is something I’ve researched extensively to help me with ‘compartmentalisation’ as a poet and writer.

Who are some of your key influences, writers and others, when it comes to your writing?

Poets/writers such as Rumi, Vasko Popa, Khalil Gibran, Al Khansa, and Ezra Pound to name a few. Surrealist painter Dali – the artwork of Hassan Isfanani (Kitāb al-Bulhān/Book of Wonders). Other influencers (philosophers) include Ghazali, Alan Watts, and Simone de Beauvoir. Of course, there is music and also religious scripture (Abrahamic and other) as literary works.

Whether it’s the spectral and the mystical, or the things we inherit — guilt, trauma, knowledge — there’s a certain preoccupation with the intangible or the affective in many of these poems. What is it about the intangible that resonates with you?

I believe this kind of thinking is steeped to some degree in existentialist philosophy, i.e., the questioning, pondering, and preoccupation with that which is impossible to know – the concept of life and our ‘coming into existence’ has always fascinated me. Also, spirituality and personal spiritual experiences that have shaped my thinking and writing.

Zeenit Saban-Jacobs’ Inside an Eyeball is available via the Botsotso Web Store.