Accolades for Plaatje poets
Athol Williams has won the 2016 Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award for his poem Visit at Tea Time. It is Williams’s second win in the annual competition.
His fellow shortlisted poets, Siphokazi Jonas and Charles Marriott, were also acknowledged: Jonas took second place for Mam’Bhele’s Harvest, and Marriott was third for Cape Town.
All three won cash prizes, with Williams also earning a three-week residency at the Nirox Foundation in the Cradle of Humankind.
A poet and social philosopher I killed a man, she says, her
memories hanging heavy, like long thick black braids
from her head hung low. Her demons have sunk
their claws into her cheeks, her sins trapped
in dark bags of pain hanging beneath her eyes, eyes
that look as though they once knew how to smile.
What are you in for? I’d asked the
eighteen-year-old drowning in her torment and
oversized blue uniform sitting in a Pollsmoor prison cell,
her small frame drawn as tightly into itself as her
horror will allow.
My wife was not happy for me to
come here, visiting a murderer. She fired a barrage of
fearful questions: bars, will there be bars or glass
between you and her? Will a guard be present? What if
something goes wrong? Why can’t someone else go? It’s
just for a cup of tea and a prayer, I assured her. There
is no safety barrier, I am sitting face to face with a
killer, someone who has taken a life, broken
commandments while the rest of us broke promises. She
doesn’t look like a murderer, but what face does a
murderer wear?
Thou shalt not kill, I remind
myself, the words roll around my mind as I roll the pen
around in my pocket, my weapon of defence in case I
need one. There is never a reason to kill, my
morality whispers, we have given her the justice she
deserves.
I stabbed him in the neck, she
continues, unprompted, snapping me back from my from Cape Town, Williams is the chairman of Read to Rise, a youth literacy nongovernmental organisation that he cofounded.
He has published three poetry collections and selected poems by him have been published in anthologies and literary journals in the United Kingdom, the United States and South Africa.
He is also the author of the Oaky series of inspirational children’s books.
Williams’s memoir, Pushing Boulders, was published this month.
righteousness. Her spirit seems to recoil as she pukes the
words; she looks shocked, as though hearing of her
crime anew, like a young soldier just awaking to
her role in an unjust war. I reported every time, every time I
was raped, she sobs. Everyone knows, she says, with a
sadness that makes my body quake, cold. It happens
to all the girls in the township; even if we report
it, even if we scream, no-one helps. When it happened
the seventh time, I killed him, I killed the man who
did it.
The seventh time! I scream in silence.
I don’t want to go free, she says
softly, after a pause; someone has to pay for our sins,
her hard eyes fixed intensely on mine. When you’re
born in the shadows you never find light, she says.
Who makes the shadows? her voice tails off. Who makes the
shadows? I repeat.
I know who makes the shadows.
Like a hammer to my forehead,
chaos explodes. I hear loud echoes all around, heavy
steel smashing against heavy steel, doors banging,
anguished screams, barking guards. I hear eerie chatter like
tree leaves fist-fighting in the wind, tongues reciting sins.
I can’t find comfort anywhere in my chair. Where’s
the tea? It is tea time dammit, but I’ve got no tea,
where’s the fucking tea!
I leave in a hurry, no time for prayer, just glad to be outside. I rush off to find some tea, or maybe something stronger.