Deeply-felt poetry launches at NELM

Award-winning Eastern Cape poet Mxolisi Nyezwa’s new poetry compilation, Malikhanye, was emotionally received at its launch at the National English Literary Museum’s Eastern Star Gallery on Monday evening.

Award-winning Eastern Cape poet Mxolisi Nyezwa’s new poetry compilation, Malikhanye, was emotionally received at its launch at the National English Literary Museum’s Eastern Star Gallery on Monday evening.

Nyezwa, who has published two previous books of poems, New Country (2008) and Song Trials (2000), was introduced by poet Robert Berold, also the publisher of Deep South books. “A tremendous energy flows through these poems,” said Berold. "It confronts the complexity of daily life at all levels, without judgement. It contains many levels of reality in one poem, sometimes within one line, from the cosmic to the township street level.”

The title of the compilation comes from a sequence of poems on the death of Nyezwa's son, Malikhanye, at the age of three months. Nyezwa said he wrote about all his emotions, whether or not they were directly about his grief: “I wanted to express everything I was feeling at that time."

He said he writes things as he sees them, and hopes they help other people see things in a new and positive light.

Not only a poet, Nyezwa runs a business from a steel container in Motherwell, Port Elizabeth. He started off by selling vetkoek, but now concentrates on providing business and internet services. He has won some national awards for his poems, including the Thomas Pringle Award for poetry and the South African Literary Award for poetry, both in 2009.

He is also the editor of Kotaz, a Xhosa and English cultural magazine. Malikhanye was also was launched in Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth.