kagablog

Alert! I’m pleased to announce that Natalia Molebatsi has taken up the reins at Muse, BOOK SA’s platform for poetry and spoken word.

Natalia compiled and edited the recently-launched We Are… A poetry anthology. A poet, performer and writer, she has her finger on the pulse of South Africa’s incredibly vibrant spoken word scene.

Look out for her first post as Muse editor on Monday: an interview with Myesha Jenkins.

Here’s a brief clip of Natalia performing:

And you can read more about her here:

Natalia Molebatsi is a performing artist and writer who has performed at among others: the Grahamstown Arts Festival, the Urban Voices International Spoken Word Festival, the First Encounter between South African and Philippine Poets (hosted by the University of South Africa - UNISA), the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, the Udine Solidale and Sunsplash Music Festivals in Udine (Italy) the Anam Cara, The Goddess Awakened international conferences hosted by the University of Udine and the ISOLA international conference in Lecce (Italy), the International Poetry festivals of Florence and Genoa. She has also lectured at the Universities of Milan, Venice, and Rome.

this announcement by ben williams first appeared here

My lil sista Lorea is a daughter of a close friend from Ethiopia and a man of Italian origin. Lorea has a head full of dreams, desires and rich curls. We are all aware of her almost 15 year old dreams and rising hormones, but we almost never see her rich curls. She straightens them. And says that she hates curls. I wonder if things would have been different if she was growing up in Africa. I am not sure because even in Africa, Black women relax and flatten their curls. In fact, when i was in high school, i always had my ponytale flat and in place, without any “bad growth” coming from underneath. In fact, i would be happier to go to school the week of my newly relaxed hair, because it would be easily manageable. As the week advances, the growth would reappear and so would my bad hair days. Lorea’s situation is illuminated by the fact that in Italy, there are not many BLACK CONSCIOUS youth, never mind black people. She is among a few black people in her school. Unlike most of the mixed “race” kids that i see around, Lorea’s face bears strong African features, her lips (which she hates) and her dark(by European standards) skin. She is a voluptuous African looking girl, growing up around three strong women (mother and two sisters) born and partly raised in Ethiopia. Her household is then often spiced with hair odours from the washing, and plaiting and combing (but never straightened). They eat Ethiopian njera almost everyday, listen to Ethiopian and other African music, and make home (away from home) for me. We love, laugh and lie around together nurturing one another’s journey with kisses and a kind of sister love. This however, is still not enough for Lorea. She is fifteen, she is Italian, and that is it for her! Africa?? It happens to be the womb she comes from, but has no taste of the place. Has never been nor wants to go there. “I mean, there is always war,” she says, without wondering about those who cause the war (for oil and its routes), even when her sisters try to get some perspective through. She is not aware of the war she will most probably have to face all her life. Refusing who she is (she is already on a diet) because she heard that African women are fuller figured. If she becomes rich and famous she will “halve her lips”. For now, she can only use what they call “piastra” in Italian, to straighten her curly beautiful black hair…

She is the world
and the world hers
made from spice and coal
She is the story in my words

could she be the one?
saving tomorrow with the innocence in her gaze?

I see time reflected on her brow
only if we could cease these seconds
the world’s eyes could succumb
to the grace of her gaze…

i’m raising you to wake up and take a ride on
the universe
be a beam of soul/sound/energy
Create my child like you the created,
learn the language of moulding
seeds into fruitful beings
I’m raising you so you too can raise me
Infant of my skin

Teach me lessons about the two of us we’re yet to learn
and believe me child, some of the roads i know can save your soul
so listen up child

i’m raising you to wake up
and be yourself or don’t wake at all
life is not for the feeble
stand ready for teachings of time
and only life alone can extend her long arms to give you
riches i can never reach
so clothe yourself with ancient
souls who knew before we did that you, the future
will be born into this crazy but jazzy scene called life
rise and let the world know you are here to claim yourself

never wait for life’s breath to blow into your lungs rather
bloom from the dust we rose from
like mystics to grow your own wings
and be sure to ask for strength between these wings
so they don’t split in halves cause child,
i’m raising you to be whole

paint your life’s everyday in ways not forced on you
but reflections felt by you cause none but ourselves
can blow up a true self that is everything there is to be

raise your story’s voice to go beyond any beyond and any ghost
that could suck out your way up to clouds of choice
have sacred communion the past that is knotted to your presence souls
cause child, any presence that lacks a past is part of the lost
so listen up child

listen close, cause you’re as sistah and i’m a sistah
i’m raising you to remove your walk from exhausting arms of men-talities
who cant take a strong sister
and white folk who want to think we’re strong enough
only for taking their instructions
and child, I’m still tasting the bitter truth I am learning that
not every woman is a sistah
so, listen up child

i’m raising you, bloom of my belly
infant of my skin
never to step into boxes these aren’t enough to hold your stories alive
rise to the knowledge that our people and theirs
are tapestries growing long and wide enough to hold you up
tlil you can hold yourself
never forbid your truth in spaces
that strangle your realities
rise child your vision is your voice

I have laboured to challenge convention
scrubbed the floors of my heart
tended the soil of my womb
so the fruit of my garden would be like you
child of mine, beautiful beyond magic herself
i stood guard at the entrance of your existence
to usher you into these arms/bosom/back
that i am raising you to fly beyond

so listen up child!

today we are alive,
we got each breath from now
so breathe aloud till the next promise is born

Alive children of the sea
is to rise and fall under the gaze of the sun
we are alive to spin in wombs,
rest in tombs and grow like trees

Alive is a question of confrontation
alive is a question of who you
are and who you want to be
alive is a question of what to say, to who and why

so breathe aloud till the next promise is born