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Of Transition into Spiritual Maturity:
It is our pleasure to introduce Owele, the shimmering new book of poems by the South African poet, Sihle Ntuli. Over the summer, we— Abhijit and O-Jeremiah, fourth and third year Phd students of the CWP sat down virtually with Ntuli to discuss Owele, his motivation, approaches, and poetics. For those that don’t know already, Ntuli was the winner of the most recent edition of the University of Georgia CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM-sponsored Diann Blakely National Poetry Competition, judged by Vivek Narayanan. What struck us immediately about Ntuli’s new book is the poignant sense of place (and un-place) both spiritual and geographical. There is awe and there is disillusionment. There is quiet power and fierce quietness. There is rhythm, song, and anticipation, as the lines in his winning poem for our competition declare of the roosters:
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,
Owele offers this profundity and wonder over the course of 82 pages. We hope that you grab a copy here and, while you are waiting, read this interview.
Abhijit: In what ways do you believe the oral traditions you grew up around influence your poetic style and thematic choices?
Sihle: Thank you so much Abhijit. First let me give high praises to God for this privilege.
Isithakazelo or the praise songs of the Ntuli clan have quite a significant influence on this collection through their partial reciting, revisiting and reimagining. What's significant to know is that the origins of the Ntuli clan begin at the Thukela River, this is in itself a significant starting point for my own lineage, alongside the very etymology of the Ntuli name, which means dust. My descendants are so named from a portion of isithakazelo sakwaNtuli, where they were hurriedly fleeing from amazim’zimu or cannibals in pursuit. Each clan or Zulu surname has a similar song of lineage that seeks to contextualise their origins.
African mythology has a rich history that owes its very preservation to the oral bards. In other parts of our continent, they are referred to as griots, in the Nguni speaking regions we refer to them as izimbongi. For sure Owele would certainly form part of a longer line of these oral traditions, even though this is poetry for the page. I do however quite firmly believe that the pathways of lineage flow through this very work, intended for those coming after to continue with their own new and fresh perspective.
Abhijit: In many of the poems you evoke remnants and echoes of past struggles of your people. How do you conceptualize the role of collective memory and trauma in shaping current political identities and actions?
Sihle: I tend to look at the compositional and conceptualising stages with a strong desire to centre what has been relegated to the periphery. It is no longer possible to deny the ongoing silent erasure of black language and culture in favour of a more modernised system of uniformity, one that provides a pristine level of comfort for some and a severe discomfort for many.
The residue of former white-only schools in my generation is one that has felt like a dislocation. There is an unspoken trauma of the experience, the unpleasant dual implications of abandonment from both black and white sides. The shaping of political identity and action in Owele comes out of a need to reaffirm to the self, the validity of roots and rootedness, in a sense finding ways in which to return.
Abhijit: You have explored various poetic forms in this collection, so do you believe that the limitations of a strict poetic form paradoxically unlock new creative possibilities?
Sihle: Yes, I do believe so.
In truth I do enjoy a good creative challenge, I find there is a lot more to learn from the balancing act us poets often do, especially with a particular form whilst still remaining true to your own creative voice.
I’m most proud of Swimming versus Drowning, it was this poem that taught me the most about the art of word placement and working with very little. It is definitely worth the reward; it is such a thrill to be suddenly overcome by a gratifying sense of fulfillment once a desired result comes together.
O-Jeremiah: I am struck by the bilingualism in your work. In one poem, the speaker laments the suppression of the mother-tongue. The whole collection stages a protest in response to this erasure. I wonder how the speaker’s thinking and imagining in two linguistic modes influence the way you explore your themes? In what way does bilingualism represent an act of protest or artistic possibilities?
Sihle: I felt a deep sense of shame that the isiZulu portions were the most difficult for me to write. Ideally, I wanted the isiZulu portions to equal the quality of my English poems, however, I had to make peace with the very real possibility that this may not happen.
While Owele could be considered a form of protest, I understand it to be a more authentic mirroring of my current reality; the fact that I am a multilingual black African man navigating the world through two linguistic modes that each have their own implications on the natural, the linguistic and most of all the poetic realm.
There is an unintended interweaving element that developed in Owele, with a version of just the English poems, another with just the Zulu poems. However, the beauty lies in the ways in which the isiZulu poems speak to the English poems thus forming a whole new experience. I feel the most authentic understanding of the work is for those who get to know how both of these worlds coexist, while still being able to function separately.
O-Jeremiah: Your book seems to grapple with a cosmological paradox. In the poem, “Ars Poetica as Bildungsroman”, the speaker asks: “how soft the soil of devotion / how hard the clay of disdain / what of bones forming the opening line? / will it break? will it be strong enough to hold?” How does the broader tradition and form of the Bildungsroman in this poem and other poems mirror the core existential concerns in the book?
Sihle: The Ars Poetica becomes a way for me to return to the essence, or rather the core basis of my own philosophies and beliefs around poetics. I had been listening to Jay Electronica’s Written Testimony alongside reading Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet at various stages, this placed me in a mindset to reconsider and interrogate the broader implications around terms like ‘creation’ and ‘creator’ as being adjacent to hubris.
Based on the various interrogations that underpin the spiritual and existential aspects of the book, I understood the need to consider the Bildungsroman as a way to contextualise various forms of deviance and obedience in relation to the Zulu experience of navigating a suffocating western world every day, the collisions of which take place on the very pages of Owele.
O-Jeremiah: Owele also centers a ritual of a place, of healing, of transition into spiritual maturity. How does writing represent a meta-textual ritual on the journey to enlightenment for the speaker and maybe for you?
Sihle: Perhaps more than a journey to enlightenment, for the speaker there is a willingness to undergo a transformative journey no matter the pain. One big anxiety about writing Owele was being overexposed in terms as how I approach craft and the personal.
To write almost as if I have nothing to lose became a way to shed a heavy load. Through the ritual of continuous self-improvement, I’ve come to understand that the writing process is one that I take delight in sharing with the world but one that is ultimately defined and intended to be my own.
O-Jeremiah Agbaakin & Abhijit Sarmah: Thank you.
Sihle Ntuli was born in KwaMashu in 1990. He holds an MA in Classics from Rhodes University, Makhanda, and has lectured at the Universities of Johannesburg and the Free State. He has also held fellowships at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies and the Centre for Stories, Western Australia.
He is the author of two previous collections of poetry and two chapbooks, including Rumblin’, previously published by uHlanga. He is the winner of the 2024/2025 Diann Blakely Poetry Competition, a 2024 Best of the Net winner, and a former editor of New Contrast. He lives in Durban.
Abhijit Sarmah is a poet and researcher specializing in Indigenous literatures and creative writing. He holds a Master of Philosophy (MPhil.) degree from Dibrugarh University, India and is currently a fourth-year Phd candidate at the University of Georgia. He is also a UGA Arts Lab Graduate Fellow (2022-25) and has received such honors as the Ruth Pack Scholarship from the Institute of Native American Studies and Michael G. Moran Graduate Student Award from the Department of English at UGA.
O-Jeremiah Agbaakin holds a law degree from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and an MFA at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of The Sign of the Ram (APBF/Akashic Books, 2023), selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the New Generation African Poets Chapbook series. He is a third-year doctoral student of Creative Writing at University of Georgia.
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