kagablog

BOOK: BELLA

AUTHOR: Isabella Motadinyane

PUBLISHER: Botsotso Publishing

REVIEWER: Mphutlane wa Bofelo

Beginning with the title, Bella is a poetry book repudiates fixed notions of a sense of presence, self and identity and narrows the boundary between being and non-being, past and present and myth and reality. Though Bella is short for Isabella this book is not self-titled in the traditional sense of an artist naming his\her work after himself\herself and\or placing himself\herself at the center of his\her work. The choice of this the title is more in the spirit of celebrating the name and personality of Isabella Motadinyane and of remembering and re-membering her life and times (and works) rather than a suggestion that the focus of the poems is Isabella Motadinyane. It is true that Isabella passed away in 2006 without having written\published a book. Yet- since Bella consists of her works and is named after her- it is also true that Isabella Motadinyane has written a book and has given it her name. The dismantling of the chasm between now and then, and between the concrete and the abstract runs like a thread in Bella.

The dialogue with the self and the reader is disguised in the form of monologues that contains reminiscent, reflective descriptions of emotions evoked by particular sights and scenes, faces and places, characters, voices and utterances. On the surface it appears as if the object of most of the poems is other characters or certain places but on close scrutiny it turns out that in many instances one gains more insight on the narrator\poet. In actual fact the poet is finding and expressing herself in her interaction with people and in the enunciation of how others view her. Even where the personal voice of pain and anguish is expressed as in “My Bruised Soul”, it is the reaction and utterances of others that movingly captures the poet’s fate:

” my night shrieks \ shocks my neighbors\ “this is weird\ is she eaten up by rooi mure?”\ they cry\ feeling my pain\ my tears\ pulling a sinking boat\ created me pains”

Many of the poems in this collection explore the theme of the intricacy of identity and the fluidity of a sense of self by narrowing the line of demarcation between the real and imagined, the perceptual and the factual, and the abstract and the concrete. Abstract things like shadows, the voice and speech are represented as physical and concrete terms.

“moving shadows thicken on walls\ voices become fluffy \ to listening ears\i stitched my speech \ to set my back free”

The survival of beauty\holiness \positivity in the midst of a hopeless situation where there are ample possibilities of descent into ugliness, evil, hopelessness and pessimism is symbolized by an angel hanging from a thread. The self is portrayed as not so obvious and sure but in a very blurred way whereby the known and unknown, certain and uncertain both informs one’s self-construct and self-consciousness.

“I took a few strides in the mirror\ there I met a familiar stranger in the mirror” There is a sense of uncertainty as to what constitutes the self: “I do not remember the self anymore \ only voices calling after me.”

Ironically a strong sense of presence and self is registered in the places the poet\persona has been to long after s\he’s left:

” On a full moon\ under moving shadows\ I left my mark on the floor”.

The “I” in the poems articulates a self-reflective, soul searching personal voice: “my bruised soul \ color my face pale\ identity gradually fading\ trying to stretch \ wrinkle lines straight”, as well as a conversational voice, directed towards both an imaginary audience and a fictional character (or real person): ”You pulled an elastic \ down my legs\ I looked into your eyes.” Relationships and interaction with the other contributes to the growth of as sense of awareness and :” With the reflections of the moon on your face \ tickling pores of awareness in me \ I spread my sea wings apart\ for you to come in.”

However a handful poems have the narrative voice that provides commentary on the ills and problems bedeviling society through descriptions of the tragic conditions of victim: ”she walked a painful lane home \ wiping tears of change\ from her soiled body\but told one about those fakes\ now her poison intake \lays her bones \ perspires with naked truth” To highlight the stigma and silence surrounding the HIV\AIDS the poet does not mention the disease throughout the poet but resort to an English translation of the euphemistic street jargon used to refer to the disease: “ Reading her medical record\ as three little words\ holding back her years” ( In street lingo HIV is often referred to as ‘Amaghama amathatho’, meaning three letters.) This beautiful collection of poems -whose only weakness for me is the misspellings and orthographic errors in some of the Sesotho\Setswana poems- does justice to the memory and legacy of this great poet.