2024-2025 Winning Poem
"Shade or The Revelation of All Our Neighbourhood Has Lost"
by Sihle Ntuli
by Sihle Ntuli
This poem was chosen by Vivek Narayanan, the 2024-2025 Diann Blakely Visiting Poet.
in our neighbourhood the roosters have chosen silence, refusing to receive the glorious rise of the morning sun with us. it has been so long since we heard the sound of crowing, the generation who formed a bond with trees remain haunted by tree stumps; my grandmother among them. often i have heard it said, that the living keep the spirit of the dead with them, holding it inside, here, there & everywhere. in our neighbourhood, only the sound system refuses to die, the presence of an elder no longer lulls loud subwoofers to sleep; & this is how we lose them some of us will say. in isiZulu, the word for shade & dignity is one & the same, the gathered wood we chopped down in silver, another time we fell short. & this is how we surrendered them, because our minds were too stubborn to yield, with a passion so warm it burnt, as if harsh rays of the sun would never hurt us again, so forgetful, that even the trees serve a purpose
Photography credit to "Centre for Stories"
Sihle Ntuli
Sihle Ntuli is a poet, classicist and editor from Durban, South Africa.
He received his Master of Arts in Classical Civilizations from Rhodes University, where he briefly lectured Classics at the University of the Free State and the University of Johannesburg. His writing has been supported by the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies in South Africa and the Centre for Stories in Australia through the JIAS Fellowship & Patricia Kailis Fellowship respectively. He also served as the editor-in-chief of South Africa’s oldest literary magazine New Contrast in 2023. He is a 2024 Best of the Net poetry winner and a Pushcart prize nominee. His poems have appeared in ADDA stories, Poetry Wales, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks; Rumblin (uHlanga 2020) and The Nation (River Glass Books 2023) alongside two full length collections Stranger (Aerial Publishing 2015) and Zabalaza Republic (Botsotso Publishing 2023)