Kaboyaone shares her stitches, scars in new book
Alinguist by profession, Katlego Uyapo-Kaboyaone published a poetry anthology titled Stitches and Scars. In an interview with Arts & Culture, Uyapo-Kaboyaone said the book was a poetry anthology that evolves around her narrative on love, loss, lust and life. She also explained that the book was a tapestry of her heart with all its beautifully knitted stitches and scars.
She further pointed out that she opted for poetry as it had been the best way she expressed herself, explained things and exposed them.
“Besides that, I studied literature in English at high school and aced it. And in going to UB, it was either I became a lawyer or a writer. I ended up with a Bachelor’s degree and PGDE double major in French and English, through which I studied literature in both languages and how to teach it in both languages.
My target audience is mainly everyone who has been broken, who is broken and who will be broken. In short, if you are not, you will be my audience cause everyone breaks at one point and it is inevitable,” he said.
The book is made up of 40 poems in 59 pages. According to Uyapo-Kaboyaone, the message of Stitches and Scars is, if one is holding on with a thread, they must knit with it. She called on individuals
to knit every void, every wound and every slit. She added that such people must not have to hold on to anything that leaves them dangling, reflecting on their challenges. Uyapo-Kaboyaone further explained that it was more mental than anything. She said she had to go back into her darkest memories of losing her protective grandfather, step father, only assimilate brother to death adding that to the countless heartbreaks from the same person before she met her husband.
“And just imagining the worst for the purpose of art, so I write what I feel because unless you feel the emotions, you can not write them. At one point, I was excelling in my pursuit to be a writer, I was winning both regional and national awards. I remember my first cheque was a P1,000 I got when I won first price national poetry.
However, somehow I stopped writing for competitions as I was going through healing and only wrote for therapy. Kingdom Publishers and Gaborone published my book on February 10, 2022,” she explained.
She said her husband supports her in everything she does, good or bad. She also explained that writing liberates the writer and the readers simultaneously. She advised aspiring authors to write if they want to write.
She called on them to write those lyrics for that dancer to dance, write that book for those readers to read, write that script for actors to act, write that anecdote for future generation and right the wrong.
Moreover, she explained that as an author and a reader, she was aware that, readers would ask themselves questions about who each poem refers to, what she meant, who she is, what is fictional or factual.
She pointed out that the truth was, the poems were both factual and fictional and how the readers interpret the poems was entirely on them adding that there would not be any wrong or right interpretation.