AiW note: This is the second in our new “Words on…” Q&A series in collaboration with Poetry Africa 2023.
Taking place from the 5th to the 17th October, this year across the three South African cities (Johannesburg, Durban and Bloemfontein), the theme for the 27th edition of Poetry Africa is VOTE4POETRY: MORE THAN WORDS. The Festival draws on centuries’ long traditions of poetic voice to celebrate poets who uphold the principles set down before now to offer our current moment new directions that look forward to the “reclaiming of a more optimistic future”.
Our first Words on… Poetry Africa Q&A for 2023 was with the Festival’s Featured Poet, Eugene Skeef.
Today, we are delighted to hear from Solly Ramatswi of Soetry Media (South Africa).
AiW: Thanks, Solly, for giving us your time and responses to our Words On… Poetry Africa Q&A. Could we start with you telling us a bit about your involvement with the Festival this year?
SR : Hello, I am Solly Ramatswi, also known as Soetry, from Soetry Media. This year I’m part of Poetry Africa Festival – #vote4poetry, #PoetryAfrica2023 – as one of The Four Horsemen – these are me, Jonathan Lefenya, Thuthukani Myeza and Masai Sepuru – which is an apocalypse!
I’m also in the Slam Jam top ten, which is really exciting, and even having to get to perform at the programme launch at Dubuga was an interesting and exciting thing to do with Poetry Africa this year.
Could you also let us in to a bit about your (other) work — your writing and/or any other kinds of work, roles, or the more general and different sorts of professional hats you wear?
I am a poet, writer, scriptwriter, and songwriter. I try to choreograph, but it’s nothing official. When we’re doing my productions as a theatre maker, I’m also a translator between Sepedi and English.
I incorporate poetry to have it in the space of theatre – some of the really awesome things that we do. My company, Soetry Media, also curates shows every third Sunday at the Joburg Theatre with the CSP (Current State of Poetry) Showcase, as we are in partnership with the Joburg Theatre, the Youth Development and the Current State of Poetry, and also the Creators Court by Jonathan Lefenya.
We have direction for poetry in theatre when we offer that platform.
We also have what we call ‘Project Translation’, under Solly Ramatswi (which is me) and Soetry Media, where we held the first ever ‘Sign-In’ Slam: people were signing while they were slamming simultaneously. The winner, Olive Olusegun, is actually part of Poetry Africa Festival this year.
Poetry Africa Festival Draws Full Houses and Rave Reviews
What would you say is the best investment you’ve made in your professional self / selves, and/or the most valued advice you’ve received about navigating your industry (or industries)?
The best investment was putting in the time to my craft. I think that was the most important part that I started with. It’s not just saying that I’m going to rehearse for something, but it’s putting in the background work, the admin, the marketing. The moment you do, you realise that poetry is more than being at the front of the stage, especially when you’re making a living out of it.
What’s the strangest, most significant – outrageous, even – thing you yourself have done, or would do, because of, or for a book (text / story / poem/ piece of writing)? Is there a serendipitous, interesting, perhaps even uncanny book / text related thing that’s happened to you? Perhaps a happy, weird accident that has occurred around books that you can share with us?
I don’t know… I wonder what the strangest thing is..? I think I would say the most outrageous thing was down to a piece of writing, my own writing. I have a production called Prayers, Intimacy of a Broken Artist. I like exploring in my work and what I was doing there was exploring the relationship between sex and trauma, and why sex is actually a distraction that might be, sometimes, an undoing. Some of the weirdest and canny things that we would need to do would be having a masturbation scene in the text and then actually doing it in the production, how to do that having never done anything like it…
One of the most interesting or happy accidents or things I remember as a young poet – I mean, I still am a young poet – but back then, was running into the name of a book – Teaching my Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire. That was a moment where I was like, okay, so this is what poets do.
What are the most ethical and/or heart-lifting changes in practice in your working life that you’ve seen happening across your industry/industries recently? Is there anything you would like to see become more visible and celebrated going forward?
There is a saying that it is a good time to be a poet. And indeed, it is really a good time to be a poet in the country right now as we can see with the changes that have been happening. Not only that, but we’re seeing people be more open to poetry, whether it’s in theatre spaces, whether it’s in advertising, marketing, copywriting… We find people being poets in those spaces, and being able to do that. We can mention Yamoria, Thuthukani Myeza, Jonathan Lefenya – that’s what I look up to.
Also, the fact that poetry is something that people think is worthy, especially the people who do it, and that we will take our time to make sure that we are executing this, and making sure that people get paid. Because I believe that for people to get paid, we must believe in paying people, the belief must be there – that’s a prayer that you send out to be able to receive the blessings.
Finally, how can our blog, books, and online communities best offer support for your work with African writing?
I have a production called Sinking. I don’t want to say it speaks of death, but it speaks of levitation. By ‘levitation’, I mean a history, or part of a history, that is untold. There was colonisation, but this is a story that speaks of what happened from our own side, as we see it from our own villages. What actually were the effects and the impact of colonisation and apartheid in our villages? This is a story that I barely hear. I would hear of the Soweto Uprising, for example. But what were the echoes of those fights and the space of what was happening for us? Support for it would be by spreading the word and writing articles or researching about it – that would speak of this work, in both English and Sepedi, and how it also marries the relationship between the two. There’s this translation poem, even; we call it ‘The Mouth’, or ‘Diphiri’. It’s inspired by vocabulary, which is one of the greatest bodies of work. It is like a saying in Sepedi goes: they were taken by hyenas; or it can also be said: they were taken by secrets. So that is the marrying that we have and we would speak of, and have spoken of more widely, too.
For the full programme and more about the Festival, please see the Poetry Africa website: https://poetryafrica.ukzn.ac.za/. And if you can’t get there in person, check out the online streamed events this week on at 3pm South Africa time.
Book now and get tix to see Solly, aka Soetry, in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse today, starring Solly Ramatswi, Jonathan Lefenya, Thuthukani Myeza, and Masai Sepuru.
And you can read our first Words On… Poetry Africa 2023, with Eugene Skeef, Featured Poet for this year’s Festival here:
AiW: What would you say is the best investment you’ve made in your professional self / selves, and/or the most valued advice you’ve received about navigating your industry (or industries)?
Eugene Skeef: The best investment I’ve made in my professional self is expressed through the braided strands of self-belief, respect for humanity and nature, and valuing the benefits of deep listening through creative immersion in the power of the arts as the root of social transformation.
Watch this space for more…
Categories: Conversations with - interview, dialogue, Q&A, Words on the Times...
join the discussion: