Love and loss inspire the lines of poet Siphokazi Jonas's latest works

Jonas uses her poetry to not only address issues of politics or trauma but also of joy

14 March 2021 - 00:00 By sanet oberholzer
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Poet Siphokazi Jonas.
Poet Siphokazi Jonas.
Image: Supplied PR

When Siphokazi Jonas was asked to recite a poem ahead of this year's state of the nation address, she was given the brief to memorialise the victims of Covid-19. Given the pandemic's scope and impact this was no easy task, but one of the main inspirations for her poem, What does not sink, was the death of a friend's father.

"Because of Covid restrictions we couldn't attend the funeral," Jonas tells me over Zoom. "I remember we were attending a prayer meeting and memorial via Zoom, and it wasn't the first one I'd attended. There's something dehumanising about that — as though the sense of community had dissolved and you can't even go home and give your friend a hug."

Jonas used the image of a flood to demonstrate the impact Covid has had on our lives. "Whether it's people who've lost their jobs, whether it's the deaths, whether it's the way schooling has had to change or how inequality has widened as a result of the disease."

She also touches on other ways the disease has negatively impacted on us — like artists struggling to make a living or the PPE corruption that left health workers exposed. The death of Collins Khosa and the discrepancies between the actions taken against beach protesters and pensioners who were sprayed with water while standing in line for social grants also concern her.

CHALLENGING

The 35-year-old poet, based in Cape Town, hails from Komani in the Eastern Cape. She started writing poetry in high school and was exposed to the world of the spoken word as a student. In 2017 she quit her job to pursue poetry full time.

Despite SA's long history of poetry in the form of praise or protest poetry, she says working as a poet isn't easy — it is still very niche and finding audiences is challenging.

As a poet, she not only addresses issues of politics or trauma but also of joy. "My role as a poet is to interrogate a lot of things. It's to highlight, it's to question, it's to challenge as much as I can."

#WeAreDyingHere is one of 12 South African films selected for this year's Pan African Film + Arts Festival in the US where it's in the running for the best narrative short award. It is inspired by a poem Jonas wrote in 2018 in response to the issue of gender-based violence in SA, adapted into a stage production and subsequently reworked into a film. If it wins the award it will qualify to be submitted to the Oscars. The winners will be announced at the end of the festival today.

Jonas has also recently worked on a collaboration between Google Arts & Culture and SA Tourism to shoot a promotional video encouraging local and international tourists to explore SA. The result is a love letter of sorts that touches on why Jonas adores her country.

Siphokazi Jonas performing.
Siphokazi Jonas performing.
Image: Supplied PR

She will be performing at the 24th edition of the Time of the Writer Festival on March 21, which will be accessible online.

WHAT DOES NOT SINK BY SIPHOKAZI JONAS

Ufikile unogumbe, ugalelekile
Akankqonkqozi, udiliza umgubasi.
There is a flood inside our house.
The water climbs up the wall when we weep;
it does not let us breathe.
Everything is wet with grief.
Before this pandemic, we would cast a funeral song into the dark like a flare,
and the neighbours would come to hold our arms as we drove the water
out the door.
Before grief reached out ankles.
Before it swept us to our knees.
Before it flowed into our pots and our beds.
To mourn meant a community gathered,
like a bank between you and the river of death.
Now death has dampened this ritual —
We mourn alone.
The neighbours lift their arms to relieve the water in their lungs —
We are drowning.
This flood has reached into the inner rooms
and quenched lives young and old.
It has taken what we are not ready to lose.
It spits the stories of the living into the street as injured furniture.
Like pensioner in line for a social grant
whose life has no space to protest a beach,
but she still returns home, clothes soaked.
Or the man who dies for a beer in his backyard.
And the nurse tying a tattered mask together with prayer and is still unprotected.
Or the artist who contemplates eating her own words to ease her hunger — and art starves.
This flood ruins us all.
But what of the after,
when the depth of this moment is absorbed
by history?
Who will we be?
We are a people who know how to build out of the remnants of disaster,
and we will do it again, and again.
When we salvage what is useful,
may we find ourselves baptised into something new:
New ways of mourning,
A people who have learned to breathe underwater,
reciting the names of those we have lost, and memories that never sink.

© All rights reserved, February 5 2021.

• Get in touch with Jonas on Twitter and Instagram under @siphokazi_j and on Facebook. #Sonapoem and #Sona21poem


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