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Seminar

Volume 1 | Issue 1 | March 2006 | 













Mzi kayise Mahola

 
 
1: How and when did it dawn upon you that you have a poet in you? Could you remember your first ever poem?
 
From the year that my elder sister bought me a novel as my birthday present, I developed keen interest for literature. What I found very challenging and fascinating at school was essay writing. I was formally introduced to poetry in Grade 8 and I instantly fell in love with narrative poetry. It was in our final year (1969) as a Matriculant or Grade 10 learner that I wrote my first poem. The title of that poem was Moths round a Lamp. Until that day I used to think that only dead people wrote poetry, because books that we read were written by dead people. I had never met a living writer in my life. I had no idea that I could write a poem until a classmate came over to my desk to show me a poem that he had written. I was surprised, because I did not know that a living person could write a poem. I read the poem and felt that I could write a better one, and so I wrote the first poem out of jealousy. A lot of poems were to follow after that initial poem, though I was not prepared to share them with anybody.

 

2. What makes you write poetry? Life or beauty of life?
 
 
At first I wrote poetry to release the steam of political pressure and melancholy exerted on us. I later used poetry as a platform for self-expression. when political training in our liberation movement broadened my scope I identified myself with the suffering and politically oppressed masses of the world. Today I find inspiration to write from the natural environment where man is the chief player. I write about man’s propensity for destruction and his weakness to succumb to evil trappings. I write about man’s capacity to love and I write about mysteries of nature. Finally I’ve discovered the therapeutic effect of writing poetry so I write to purge myself of stressing situations.

 

3. What is your perspective of beauty?
 
To me beauty is what makes the spirit jump with joy. It may be the beauty of an expression, of land, of a woman or of an object. Beauty is synonymous with perfection and innocence and is incapable of doing evil.
 
4. Does any incident provoke you to poetry?
A lot of things provoke me to write. Anxiety or pain finds release in poetry. Social injustices, tragedies, poverty, animals, immorality, anguish or any experience that disturbs or exhilarates me can trigger poetic lines.
 
5. How do you treat the things happening around us? War, terror, colonization, genocide, homicide and what not!
 
They appall me, because many innocent people and children become traumatized. Such social disorders lead to poverty and pain. In their disorderly manner they cause irreparable mental ravages. Development should be an orderly process. It should not be preceded by disorder, tears, death or spilling of blood.

 

6.What will happen to your poetry if the concept of love would be lost once and for all?
 
The concept of love can never be lost, because light will finally prevail, not evil. Even if the concept of love could be lost my poetry will remain a voice of conscience in a society that has lost its humanity. Those individuals who seek and thirst for virtuousness in man will find solace in my verses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 
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