Phodiso Modirwa is a Motswana writer whose works appear in Guernica Magazine, Brittle Paper Magazine, Jalada Africa, 20.35 Africa, Lolwe, Agbowo and elsewhere. Her chapbook “Speaking In Code” was published by Akashic Books, as part of the New Generation African Poets Box Set: Tisa.

Onyedikachi Chinedu: Hello, Phodiso. It is good to have you as our featured poet for the month.  Your chapbook, Speaking in Code, is part of the New Generation African Poets Box Set (Tisa), selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani. Can you tell me how the experience of sharing your work with a wider audience has been for you?

Phodiso Modirwa: Thank you, Onyedikachi. The opportunity to share my work with a wider audience has truly been rewarding. Having come into the writing and publishing world through spoken word, my limitations have been tested (still are), but what this journey has materialized into is something I would not have any other way. I trust that my words on the page will do just what I intend for them, so I put myself out there, sending work to journals and magazines. This is me opening myself up for rejection, misinterpretation, and appreciation but I am better for it.

The publishing of Speaking In Code was such an honor. Being the second person, if I am not mistaken in my country, after Tjawangwa Dema’s Mandibles, to be selected by the African Poetry Book Fund and published as part of the New Generation African Poets Chapbook Box Set meant that I got to publish poems I had worked on for about a year and conversed around the themes in the book which were mental health, family dynamics, domestic abuse, and identity. 

Onyedikachi Chinedu: In a previous conversation with the Ghanaian poet Tryphena Yeboah, for the African Poetry Book Fund, you wrote, “…being an African poet now to me means I am doing something worth a listen.” Has this view changed, over the years, since Speaking in Code was published? What new sensibilities matter at this stage of your literary career?

Phodiso Mordirwa: Interestingly enough, I still hold this same view. When I am writing, I do not assert my identity via a geographical region; whatever themes or questions come up in my work, I hope it shows the other side of what African writers/poets are interested in. I mentioned earlier that I came into the poetry scene through spoken word and, for a while, I worried that I might be considered untrained, lacking the decorum or even reverence for the craft, but with a bit more attention and dedication to writing, I am convinced that curiosity and respect for the craft are, as well, great teachers, and I have always had those. I recognize that poetry can be a tool for social justice, a voice for the marginalized, a way to foster community and inspire empathy through the power of language.

I hold Carol Hanisch’s sentiments on the personal also being political, so my writing explores what would be considered personal, private or even trivial, i.e domestic violence, belonging, relationship dynamics. I do this with the understanding that the personal is just as well connected to broader societal and political dynamics. 

Onyedikachi: “On the Day MmaBoi Visits, I Am Reminded of My Loneliness” expounds on the contrast of the speaker’s attitude towards the community’s needs for palliative as well as the humane need for care during difficult times. I am curious about what provided much solace for you as a creative writer during the lockdown?

Phodiso: Reading and writing were my crutches for sure! I remember reading The Crying Book by Heather Christle and feeling so much in community. When reading started to feel bland, I relied on reaching out to friends and family and talking about other things besides the pandemic, i.e., who we were before, what we would like to do later, and how much of ourselves we think will remain the same after the pandemic. I am generally introverted, so even though there were people in the neighborhood I could go out and converse with, while social distancing, my house felt much safer.

Onyedikachi: “Language,” published in Mároko, delves into the social boundaries enacted by language differences between the characters in the poem. As a poet who writes in English, how do you deal with linguistic/dialectal differences, one of the themes in Speaking in Code?

Phodiso: I interest myself with other cultures, which includes their languages. Like in the aforementioned poem, the language used by the characters – closing the speaker and her mother out – is a language I hear a lot in my country. Although I am only learning it now, my proximity to it has permitted me to think and react in it. I have also incorporated Setswana, my mother tongue, in some of my work – a word here and there. It is how I speak. My languages are hardly one thing. I am sure whatever language I learn next will influence my work in this way. Sometimes I include a glossary at the end of the poem, but it is not to underestimate the reader’s ability to catch the flow of a poem even if they don’t understand the word’s literal meaning.

Onyedikachi: You dabble between prose and poetry. How do you differentiate the mood for both, knowing when it can be a poem or a creative non-fiction?

Phodiso: For poetry, the ideas flowing out of my mind suggest a form for whatever poem I sit to write. Sometimes, I think it is free form but then I catch myself two pages in and, at this point, I think it may be prose. I go by instinct, which kicks in either during the writing process or during editing.

As for creative non-fiction, though, I almost always know when a piece is personal; it takes a while to know when to write it, but, when the time comes, three hours is enough to have penned down the whole thing, so it lets go of me. Poetry doesn’t come to me this way – so hesitant, so fully formed.

The Luxury to Pretend

at the chobe safari restaurant 
     i am as good a tourist as i’d like to imagine
          sitting quietly by the river
               a copy of ocean’s time is a mother on my left hand

i’m drinking overpriced shiraz as one does and wondering
     if the mother, who is gently gathered by time to slowness 
          hears time and thinks rest. i know i don’t

i mean i want to
     i am struggling and, for once, that’s a mirror i’m unafraid to look at
          beneath the faux calm my river’s a current of questions
               of sustenance, stability, and shelter

but i remind me
     of the three decades of my existence
          i’ve never worried myself successfully into wellness
               there’s no joy on this island i have rowed myself to

through angst and more questions
     it’s been hours; the bottle has been emptied into an evening 
          where my husband’s face mirrors chobe’s rippling
               waves – the boats are returning to the banks

and my worries are no less than they were
     the waiter lets me swirl the velvety red then take it to my nose
          like i knew something beyond my need to float into inebriation
               but i’m on vacation

i have the luxury of pretending
     nothing else matters
          except i don’t

The Right Path

It is hard to be 31 and not look back. In my many moments of looking 
back, I am met by my mother, twenty years ago, my age, freshly single, 
and back again into the madness of raising a miniature her. 31 and trying  
to stop running but the inertia of living hurls her forward. Who loved her? 
Who took her shoes off and soaked her feet in saltwater? My mother, 
not quite done but complete, not quite free but out, rehearsed normalcy like  
the decade past was just a moment of weakness caught almost in slumber 
but never again. I look back and she’s all bellbottoms, tucked in shirt,       
delicate neck scarf, lips velvety and gathered into a pout by brown lip liner. 
My mother, heels clicking the Main Mall pavement on her way to work.
Topics still a store a single mother’s purse could brave opening towards. She is
everything I know a mother should be, I hope she knew it then. I hope
she knows it now. I try not to make my now a collage of her, but so often     
I catch my neck craning back, asking, I am on the right path mama, aren’t I? 
I hope I am. I hope I am.