Mama’s girl gets prize
SOL PLAATJE POETRY AWARD: SOME HEAVYWEIGHTS ATTENDED CEREMONY
Poet laureate calls for local literature to be translated into all SA languages.
The winner of the ninth Sol Plaatje Poetry Award was announced in Cape Town on Thursday night, with Zukiswa Adonis taking the accolade for her poem Ubumama (My mother).
Zukiswa Muriel Adonis loves art, the theatre, travelling and window shopping.
She spends most of her free time going to flea markets, watching cultural dance group performances, going to museums, galleries and bookstores, libraries and book lounges to read – and she writes poems in vernacular.
Runner-up was Wesley Roodt with Beatrice Willoughby third.
The historic venue, 6 Spin Street – around the corner from parliament – was filled with South Africa’s ambassadorial heavyweights.
In town for State of the Nation address on 12 February, the full house of writers, poets and diplomats enjoyed an evening of poetry, wine and performance, enlivened by a strong message from poet laureate Mongane Wally Serote.
In his keynote address, Serote paid tribute to the European Union’s passion for multilingualism by supporting this prize.
He stressed the importance of translating local literature into all South African languages and wondered why there was so little support from the department of arts and culture.
Poets writing in South African languages depend on the European Union’s support, Serote noted.
EU ambassador Dr Riina Kionka spoke of how important it is to see an award that celebrates all South African languages, and how proud the EU is of their support of the award.
She spoke of how important her native Estonian language is to the national culture of Estonia.
Maggie Davey, of Jacana Media, recalled the great support of one of the instigators of the prize, Keorapetse Kgositsile (Bra Willie), of how poets responded to the social drama of the new and free state, and how ongoing engagement was important.
Bra Willie was close to Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks, poets at the centre of the US civil rights movement, and his passion for poetic responses to a changing society was to some degree informed by this.
– Citizen reporter