The Poet from Kwa Mashu

On Thursday evening I went to a poetry circle that my friends R and S organize (with another woman, J, whom I met for the first time yesterday) at the BAT Centre.  Located on the waterfront between South Beach and the Harbor, the BAT Centre gathers together and supports visual and performance artists and musicians in the area.  The BAT holds events nearly every evening and there is a bar/restaurant connected to it where we gathered after the discussion.  Several poets read their recent work and after each poem we usually discussed the larger issues the poet was exploring.  Most of the poems were in Zulu, with some a mixture of Zulu and English.

The first poet who read came from the Kwa Mashu township - he wore a blue polo shirt with a popped collar and when he smiled his front incisor glinted from the gold outlining it.  He stood up and said his poem was written in "strong Zulu" - when he began speaking his hands and gestures (often touching his face and eyes for emphasis) spoke with his words.  I could only understand some of the words and Zulu grammatical structures are still new enough to me that my listening comprehension is virtually non-existent.  Afterwards, however, he and others in the room interpreted the poem for the several of us in the room who did not speak Zulu.  It was a poem about AIDS, likening it to the terrifying natural sublimity of a landscape.  In the poem, AIDS is figured as so overpowering, it is like the natural force of Mt. Kilimanjaro, so terrifyingly strong that it could kill nursing babies.  The question posed by the poem then, was that if he acknowledged and recognized this power that AIDS possessed, would it then stop its devastation?

After he spoke he rifled through a sheaf of handwritten pages enclosed in a clear plastic sleeve - although when he "read" he didn't consult his written poems.  The distinction between performance and record was clear, although other poets who came to share works in progress remained seated and read from notebooks, papers, etc.

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[mom]

wonerful art