A naked bone – Mangaliso Buzani

Description

In simple vocabulary a naked bone describes complex states of beauty and suffering, often at the borderline where life meets death. In their dreamlike rhythms and images, the poems draw strength from Xhosa culture, Christianity and elements of nature. They are love poems in the widest sense, embracing the interface between daily life and the spiritual, enacting joy and caring in the face of deprivation and mourning.

Mangaliso Buzani (b.1978) grew up in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth / Gqeberha. He began writing poetry at school, in English and isiXhosa. His aunt was a writer, and through her he met Mxolisi Nyezwa and other Eastern Cape poets including Mzi Mahola. After school Buzani trained as a jeweller at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) in Pretoria. In the library at TUT he discovered the poetry of Rumi and César Vallejo. In 2013 he did an MA in Creative Writing at Rhodes University, where he continued reading widely, particularly Spanish, Eastern European and isiXhosa poetry.
Buzani’s first collection, Ndisabhala Imibongo (Imbizo Arts, 2014), won the 2015 South African Literary Award (SALA) for Poetry. His long prose poem “a naked bone” won the 2014 DALRO award for best poem published in the poetry journal New Coin. His first book in English, a naked bone (Deep South, 2019) won the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry in 2019. Since 2016 Buzani has taught creative writing in English and isiXhosa in the Rhodes University MA programme.