S7E4: Celebrating Keorapetse Kgositsile: “Without Love There Is No Revolution That Matters”

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The Empty Chair by PEN SA

PEN South Africa

63 episodes

2 days ago

In The Empty Chair Podcast: A Transatlantic Conversation, PEN South Africa hosts authors, academics and activists based in South Africa and the USA. The podcast focuses on books, writing, social justice, freedom of expression, shared histories and possible futures. Each of our episodes is dedicated to an imprisoned writer or a writer who has been harassed by the state.

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S7E4: Celebrating Keorapetse Kgositsile: “Without Love There Is No Revolution That Matters”

The Empty Chair by PEN SA

55 minutes 19 seconds

2 years ago

S7E4: Celebrating Keorapetse Kgositsile: “Without Love There Is No Revolution That Matters”

Sandile Ngidi and Uhuru Phalafala honour the life and legacy of Keorapetse “Bra Willie” Kgositsile.

Sandile asks Uhuru about Kgositsile’s exile in the U.S., his impact on the Black Arts Movement and the significance of Pan-Africanism. Uhuru also emphasises several influences on Kgositsile’s poetics and politics: his mother and grandmother, Setswana literature and language, music, as well as Amílcar Cabral.

Sandile reads Kgositsile’s “June 16 Year of Spear”, Uhuru reads “For Gloria Bosman” and they both reflect on his poems “Red Song” and “No Serenity Here”.

Sandile Ngidi is a poet, art critic and Zulu/English literary translator. He is committed to researching the role of black intellectuals as critical producers of emancipatory knowledge, practices and thought especially in colonial and apartheid South Africa. In 2018, Mahlephula Press published his poetry chapbook, You Can’t Tell Me Anything Now.

Uhuru Phalafala is a senior lecturer in the English department at Stellenbosch University. She is a co-editor along with Phillippa Yaa de Villiers of Keorapetse Kgositsile: Collected Poems, 1969–2018 (University of Nebraska Press, 2023). Uhuru is the author of Mine Mine Mine (University of Nebraska Press, 2023), a mythopoetic epic on the migrant labour system. One of her forthcoming books is a monograph on former national poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile.

In this episode we stand in solidarity with Chinese poet, Zhang Guiqi (known by his pen name Lu Yang). You can read more about his case in an article by PEN America https://pen.org/press-release/grave-concern-for-poet-zhang-guiqi-sentenced-to-six-years-in-prison-for-calling-on-xi-jinping-to-step-down/ and an interview with his daughter: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/poet-aughter-08052022092139.html

As tributes to Zhang Guiqi. Uhuru reads “I Belong There” by Mahmoud Darwish and Sandile reads one of his own poems in Zulu and English.

This podcast series is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Embassy in South Africa to promote open conversation and highlight shared histories.