Bhlawa's Inconsolable Spirits

I have lived in Bhlawa all my life, from the day or night I was born in Madala Street. For 33 years I lived in my parents' house. For the 21 years since then, I have lived in a flat made of red bricks in Ntshekisa Street, a few metres away from the three-roomed house in Madala which I called my home. I've visited different places in the world - towns, rural homesteads, big cities, but never for too long, and very rarely. But rather, like a ship that is hauled with long ropes over a treacherous sea to a deserted bay, I have been moored to this singular harbour of a township that is inhabited by drowning men.

Mxolisi Nyezwa was born in 1967 in Bhlawa (New Brighton). He is the author of three books of poems in English, Song Trials (2000), New Country (2008 ), and Malikhanye (2011), and a book of Xhosa poems, Ndiyoyika (2016). His poetry has appeared in several anthologies in South Africa and internationally. In 1997 Nyezwa founded the multilingual cultural journal Kotaz, which he still edits. He is also a publisher of books in Xhosa under the imprint Imbizo Arts. He runs a small business and urban chicken farm in Motherwell, outside Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) in South Africa.