Yellow Shade – Dimakatso Sedite

Description

Dimakatso Sedite was born in Bloemfontein in 1969. She trained as a research psychologist and studied poetry at South African Writers’ College. She has many years of experience in community development work, with a focus on child rights, HIV/AIDS Care and Support, livelihoods, adult training facilitation, and early childhood research.
Sedite’s poem “Yellow Shade” was the joint winner of the 2019 DALRO award, and was the title poem of her first collection Yellow Shade, the joint winner of the 2022 HSS award. Her poems depict the stark realities of survival for the majority of South Africans, while at the same time celebrating the joys of daily life. Her poems have appeared widely in South African poetry journals. She has also written several reviews of books by South African poets.

“An emotionally powerful, richly allusive poet speaking the language of pictures rather than overt narrative. Sometimes the concentration and sudden divergence of images make a given poem obscure… I’m reminded of harsh, rich, crowded brush strokes […] Themes of death, betrayal, illness, abuse. Builds the commonplace textures, colours, smells of township and rural life into complex, sophisticated images of feeling and being. Underlying a sense of bitterness, despair, loss in her image-crammed world. Occasionally hope emerges, either randomly, or through the liberating power of creative work.”
– Ken Barris