collection, fhedzi, was published by Dye Hard Press in 2013. His work has appeared in several literary journals in South Africa, Canada, the UK and the US. Nxumalo has twice won the DALRO award for poetry. He also participated in the LitNet My Generation project, with his contribution ‘The train goes on coal’.
An
extensive interview with Khulile Nxumalo by Alan Finlay was published in New Coin, and is available here.
DH: When did you start writing poetry?
KN: I started
writing, playing around with the poetry we were studying in high school. But it
was only when I got to university in Cape Town that I really starting engaging
and applying myself to the craft. At school it was people like John Donne,
Milton, the sonnets of Shakespeare and Wordsworth. I think it was being exposed
to poetry other than classical English that ignited interest in trying to write.
At university as part of English we studied Eliot, Blake, Frost, ee cummings, Sylvia
Plath etc. I also took courses by Prof Kelwyn Sole on Oral Literature and in
African Literature, but by then I had been exposed to Okigbo, Soyinka, Jack
Mapanje, Sipho Sephamla, Serote, Kgositsile and Mattera.
What poets have been your main influences? What South African poets do
you particularly like?
Mongane Serote
has been the most impactful influence. I try to read South African poetry
widely, mostly in the journals that still exist. The poets I like are too
numerous to mention. Also, one tends to be touched or affected by a poem, and
it can even be from a lesser-known poet or writer. Seitlhamo Motsapi introduced
me to the work of Kamau Brathwaite, and that has been another long-standing
line of influence.
In the blurb to your first collection, ten flapping elbows, mama, you wrote: “I what I call psycho-narration, I try to
write beyond the understanding that ‘inside of one’s head’ and ‘the objective
world’ are distinct worlds. This is a form I have grown to love more since I
started preferring the long poem format that sits on a conversational tone.
It’s a multi-vocal way of writing or
telling stories in a less authoritative way, a kinda voice democracy in the poem.” For me, the
long psycho-narration poems have a montage effect and I am reminded of TS
Eliot’s The Waste Land. Can you tell
us more about how you came to psycho-narration?
The poetry I
was trying to write at high school reflected and imitated stuff like rhyming
schemes of Petrachan sonnets, and the tight barriers of language in the form.
When I started to work in the long form, the writing achieved a conversational
tone. In another phrase, the poetry loosened. Psycho-narration is about writing
as of you are narrating your own psychology. It becomes interesting when you
try to imagine a fluid barrier between the objective and the subjective, in
that the stability of the “I” persona becomes affected, and voice takes on more
interesting dimensions. Our generation of writers has to contend with a less
certain country and world, that is if you are thinking of the post-apartheid
era, and that is part of the context that makes for searching for new ways to
say things.
I find the voice of your new collection, fhedzi, to be more singular, more unified. There is a sense of one,
personal voice.
I think fhedzi is influenced by jazz and other
musical rhythms more than ten flapping
elbows, mama and that tends to unify how poems are elaborated, and creates unity
of emotion. Even though I had set out to write an angry book about the ghost of
my absent Venda father, I ended up with material that has a stronger sense of
self in it, and I imagine this is what you mean by “personal voice”. I think
the strong application that Alan Finlay brought to the editing also makes the
book more unified, as we cut out quite a lot of stuff, and we were open to new
versions of poems that might have appeared differently at another time.
Going back briefly to the blurb for ten
flapping elbows, mama, you wrote: “If we can go beyond rational thought –
or even the idea that rational thought is a reflection of reality – then
anything can happen.” Do you still have
such a view of the potential of poetry, or has it modified in the past nine
years?
Yes I still
do. It is not just for poetry but for the act of imagination itself. Some of my
concerns at the time of making that statement were from realising that there is
richness in that I, for a number of years, had imagined, conceived, created and
uttered realities in languages other than English. At the time, discourse
analysis and deconstruction were in vogue in literary studies, and I guess some
of that filtered into how I theorised about my writing.
Ten flapping elbows,
mama contains a “proemdrama” called “Craftin’”, and fhedzi contains the choreo-poem “The Melville Plenoptic”. These are not plays in the accepted sense,
and not quite dramatic poems either. What is your experience with the
theatre?
Well, you will
not believe, but I acted in plays like Noddy, Pinocchio, Aladdin as part of
Johannesburg Children’s Theatre. That was at the time when experiments of
integration between black children in the townships and white kids in the
suburbs were increasingly taking place. Almost around the time of the scrapping
of the Group Areas Act. I developed a deep interest in the theatre from then,
and went to see a lot of plays at the Market Theatre. Currently I am studying
for a master’s in dramatic arts, where as part of my practical examination I
will stage a piece that is a mixture of both “Craftin’” and “The Melville Plenoptic”.
You have also done some work in film I remember seeing a short
documentary about Staffrider that you made with artist Tracey Rose. Have
you ever been involved in music?
I listen to
music ‒ all kinds really. I do wish I had learnt to play the cello. I mess around
on the guitar, for the simple three-chord type of tunes. Before working at the
SABC, I was directing documentaries. Among others, I directed a documentary
following the daughter of Credo Mutwa in a search to find out why their house
was burnt in 1976, and collaborated with Tracey Rose as part of the Chimurenga
Digital library where I reminisce about the time when the Market Precinct was
buzzing with activity, and poetry and writing were driven by COSAW initiatives,
while bemoaning that I never got a chance to be published in Staffrider.
What is your opinion of contemporary South African poetry? Are you
optimistic about the future of poetry in South Africa?
I think the
journals must continue to exist for South African poetry to maintain a sense of
being alive. That is how I have also kept going in between collections. I think
we need a radio programme that focuses on poetry,that could also have a digital
existence. I am optimistic as most of the poets, even those from the
generations older than us, still continue to publish. I remember the last issue
of Kotaz where Mxolisi Nyezwa focused
on a number of poems in isiXhosa. As a country with so many languages, these
must be reflected in the written and published poetry.
