Koleka Putuma

“Portrait of the poet as a young genius: Bongani Madondo reviews Koleka Putuma’s Collective Amnesia”

“Koleka Putuma is the groundbreaking new voice of South African poetry”

“Culture enables us to see each other - through our stories, shared across borders and cultures”

“Contemplation means to be with the temple, or to dwell within the sacred space of attention. Contemplation is much deeper than thinking. It implies a religious observation. It implies intention, slowness, interiority, reverence”

“We are in a time where intentional listening and attention span is being eroded by our devices and the demands of the world that are constantly vying for our attention”

“There is this unspoken pressure that has seeped into our society to want to curate vulnerability or only show parts of it that are palatable in some ways”

“The stories initiate conversations about queerness in a homophobic society, Blackness in a racist society, womanhood in a misogynistic and violent society, and freedom of speech in an increasingly repressive society”

“In the realm of imagination, there are no restrictions, requirements, or guidelines that need to be followed”

“In this climate where censorship is gaining traction and being weaponised to discourage dissent, speech, or the act of speaking, and insisting on holding each other through dialogue and communication is both a protest and a promise to never be silent/silenced.”

“Poetry for me is a tool for connection, and I appreciate the ways it has connected me to people and opened me up to mechanisms of observing and being with the world”

“I think it’s in our nature to be naked as people.”

“I value being in a healthy space, I value being well, and I really value joy, and it wasn’t always like that”

“I am not okay with how religion has screwed over black people”

“When violence is inflicted on a black body, the world doesn’t flinch because it has been so normalized”

“In my work I create a space, where as a black woman, I can name my traumas/hurts, and name the people who have inflicted those traumas in an unapologetic way”

“I find living in a world where we don’t show our true selves, and where we don’t ever say we are hurting, quite suffocating”

“Being a writer/poet the work requires of you to defy and unlearn the thing that has taught you silence and the unspoken contract that the neighbors and extended family cannot know and get involved with traumas that are happening in your house and in your life, and that you are supposed to deal with it quietly and soldier on because you are a “strong black woman.””

“The narrative is that there is a head of the house, and there is a lot of silencing that comes with that”

“I live in a country where the arts are extremely underfunded”

“he experience of being Black, queer and erased, from the archive, from politics, isn’t a singular story. It is not just my story, it is the story of multiple women.”