1. Sipho Sepamla – The Soweto I Love 1
- Author
-
Vernon February
- Subjects
Inverted sentence ,Literature ,biology ,Poetry ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,English language ,Art ,Anger ,biology.organism_classification ,Sipho ,Simplicity ,business ,media_common - Abstract
Several South African poets in exile and at home found inspiration in the tragic events at Soweto. A critic at Wisconsin made a similar observation of Daniel Kunene’s poem ‘Soweto’. The terror of Sipho Sepamla’s South African landscape is poignantly portrayed precisely through the simplicity of language, the at times inverted sentence structure which further creates the impression of an awkwardness with the English language. Sipho Sepamla had, hitherto, avoided writing ‘poetry conscripted for the victims’. His poem ‘Like a Hippo’ must, at first glance, appear to the Western reader as the work of a child. The poet’s anger is contained with poise and does not spill over into a bitterness, a vituperation.
- Published
- 2020