Words and sounds at Poetry Africa

AS Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie puts it, a poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. Gauntlet thrown. The poets who took to the stage at the opening of the 17th edition of Poetry Africa met and surpassed that challenge.

Local and international poets gave audiences a taste of what to expect during the festival’s run between 14 and 19 October delivering brilliant reams of thought-provoking and soul-stirring poetry to a lively audience at the Elizabeth Sneddon theatre on Monday evening. While there were many subjects that were touched upon during the course of the evening, a common theme that seemed to emerge from the poets’ musings was the idea of freedom. Not surprising considering how calls for freedom (whether its freedom of speech, economic freedom or autonomy) still ring out years after South Africa officially became a free society.

Highlights included the likes of women poets Busiswa Gqula, Natalia Molebatsi, Lex LaFoy and Mandi Poefficient Vundla who spoke powerfully to the experiences of millions of South African women who still find themselves under the yoke of patriarchal attitudes and Lesego Rampolokeng waxed scatologically lyrical about a personal dilemma which encapsulated much of what is wrong with the arts in this country.

With such an impressive army of word warriors calling out society on its balderdash, it looks like there’s no danger of anyone going to sleep.