“I don’t want to die /with my hands in the air /or /with my legs apart.” The poetic material of Koleka Putuma, one of the many contemporary voices of the rich South African poetry, is at the intersection of two heritages in percussion. There is the pastor’s daughter, black and Christian in a country still plagued by the ghosts of apartheid, and then the young queer woman in a homophobic society, in which corrective rape of lesbians is still commonplace. It is a dark crossroads, marked by violence and anger, cries and tears, but also the crucible of an emancipatory joy which gives all the ambivalence and power of his prose. Let us quote these verses by way of reframing: “I also write love poems, /but /you only want to see my mouth torn apart by revolt, /as if my mouth were a wound /filled with pus and gangrene.”
It is therefore not surprising that the poet, also a playwright with six plays to her credit, already enjoys, at less than 30 years of age, recognition beyond the borders of her country. His second collection collective amnesia, just translated into French by Pierre-Marie Finkelstein, for Lanskine editions, has sold more than 10,000 copies since its publication in 2017, making it to date the national poetry work best-selling in South Africa. So much for the presentations. But we must not reduce the poetry of Koleka Putuma to its themes (pell-mell love, the black condition and slavery, religion, self-hatred, queer identity, family, macho hypocrisy progressive circles, including blacks, etc.).
Its form questions by neutralizing gender markers in the language the elaboration of a poetry that the time would say is inclusive. This requires a redoubled effort in the translation into French (for the pronouns, the famous “you / you” or the agreement of the participles). We also feel the influence of the performer with texts whose preaching punchlines (“every name /is a gospel locked in my bones. /every name /chant /Black girl- /Live! /Live! /Live!”) sound like a good old slam. Poetry here is a cathartic song that heals the still gaping wounds of a South Africa in denial of its past and present demons.
GROWING UP BEING BLACK & CHRISTIAN
The first man
that you are taught to revere
is a white man.
Then you go to school and you learn
the same thing.
We don’t blink.
We ask questions.
And that’s how
everywhere.
All the time.
the gospel
is how whiteness breaks into us
and bring us to our knees.
Koleka Putuma, collective amnesia, ed. Lanskine, 16 euros.