Manthipe Moila is a poet from Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds a BA Hons. in English Literature. Her work has been published in several online and print publications, including Tupelo Quarterly, New Contrast, Stirring, A Long House, 20.35 Africa, Agbowó, and Saranac Review. She’s a Charles Simic Poetry Contest finalist (Hole in the Head Review) and a Best of the Net Nominee (Hotazel Review). Manthipe is currently based in Seoul, South Korea.
Onyedikachi Chinedu: Hello Manthipe, it’s a pleasure to have you featured as our New Poet for the month. Your poem in Tupelo Quarterly is interspersed with Korean, which is beautiful. It’s common to see African writers incorporate their first languages into their works but using a foreign language is rare. Why choose to write with Korean? Is it for aesthetics or does it serve another purpose?
Manthipe Moila: Hello Onyedikachi, I am honoured to be your featured New Poet. The answer to this question is multi-fold. I currently reside in Korea and am grappling with the difficulty and beauty of the Korean language. In my writing practice, I am wont to pull from all that is around me, and so it is inevitable that Korean will end up in some of my poems. Moreover, that poem was inspired in part by the Korean word incorporated within, which I think of as not just a word but also as a concept. As the poem is one that complicates the notion of “home,” I felt the word “식구” added a conceptual complexity that an English word would not have. This is because when a poem leaps, however briefly, from one language to another, a lot of meaning can be found within the gaps. All to say, I choose the Korean words that I incorporate into my works in the same way I choose all the other words in my works. I want the diction to pull its weight and to serve the poem. That being said, I do incorporate my first language, which is Sesotho, into my poems where I feel the language will do the work I need it to. This can be seen in “Mo behe fatse, o boima,” published in the Saranac Review. It’s quite a short poem and much heavy lifting is done by the Sesotho title.
Onyedikachi Chinedu: “Her Therapist Told Her to Write Her Dead Father a Letter” explores the impossibility of the speaker’s reconciliatory process with her father. Why did you opt to use the concept of spatiality to address difficult situations in familial relationships?
Manthipe Moila: I did not go out of my way to use the concept of spatiality in the poem; it was something I grasped for intuitively. As I was writing the poem, I recalled an apple orchard I visited. When I called it to mind, it meant something different in the moment of composing than it did when I was physically there. After all, spaces are not merely the physical landscapes that we move through but are also the cues we carry with us that enable us to interpret the same space in a multitude of ways. So, re-entering the space while in a state of poetic arousal, I found that the space was calling out to me as much as I was calling out to it. It was telling me, “Here is a physical embodiment of the distance between estranged father and daughter. This is what you want to say.” At that point, what I had to do was mould that interaction into a poem, rendering the complexities of an impossible reconciliation between father and daughter.
Onyedikachi: Reading through “Cotton Tree,” I ponder about our complicated relationship with hope, and the effort we put in to sustain it. How important do you think hope and its sustainability is with the growing and endless violence against humanity?
Manthipe: I believe that hope is incredibly important. I have the first stanza of Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers” taped to my fridge. This is because as I go about my days, I sometimes lapse into a state of hopelessness about my life and about the world. When I feel like this, it is important to “feed” myself hope in a sense. This is because there are times when hope is all we have left. Of course, I speak from a position of relative privilege. I am not being subjected to war, genocide, famine, or anything of similar proportions. However, from what I have read about some of the happiest people in the world, as well as those who have survived atrocities, hope is something that got them through in the latter case, or that fuels their happiness in the former. So, I try to hold on to hope despite all my uncertainty.
Onyedikachi: Are your poems autobiographical?
Manthipe: I think it depends on where in the writing process I am. Earlier in the process, I tend to pull from my surroundings and my experiences. However, by the time I am editing, it becomes about what serves the writing. Thereafter, there is a layer of distance that I believe keeps the work from being completely “autobiographical.” That being said, I am working on a manuscript which is very personal and there is this adage about writing what you know. Although it has morphed these days into something like, “Write because you don’t know or write because you want to know,” I feel writers tend to be gripped by this or that obsession, and it is the exploration of this topic, rather than the product of the exploration, that gets them as close to an answer as they are ever going to get. My current obsession is the personal, the “home.” Thus, in my exploration of this topic, I hope to achieve some sort of closure. I have a feeling that once I have completed this manuscript, the material I will be exploring will be less “autobiographical.” Or maybe I will continue to draw from what I know until the day I die. Whatever the case ends up being, I look forward to writing about what calls to me in that moment.
Onyedikachi: I glean from your body of work this sense of deliberateness pervading them, from the careful choice of diction, the well-executed enjambment, to the succinct delivery of imagery. How would you describe your writing and editorial process? Is there a routine you practice as a poet?
Manthipe: If I am being honest, my current routine is a little bit all over the place. I have periods where I write intensively. In those periods my world becomes poetry. I listen to poetry, read at least one collection a week, journal, read instructional texts about poetry and struggle over the poems themselves. I find that being immersed makes it easier for me to begin thinking, speaking and writing in poetry. In these periods, I also find myself more open to the world, which is one thing I love about poetry – it challenges me to be engaged with everything around me. However, I am quite an introverted person and suffer from chronic fatigue, so I find that I cannot leave myself this open for an extended length of time – longer than a month for example. One thing I need to work on is relaxing when I am not writing. I hope to one day strike a balance, so my “off” periods are about guilt-free rest and recuperation, and when it is time to pick up the pen again, I am able to show up the way the poems demand. I write both with a pen and with a laptop, although I find that when I am particularly stuck, the pen is the way to go. As for editing, I find it difficult. Having a physical copy of the poem I am working on often helps. Also, getting other people’s opinions on the work is useful. Finally, giving the poem time to breathe and returning to it again and again as a different self makes it easier for me to see where the flaws are, and what needs reworking.
From what I have read about some of the happiest people in the world, as well as those who have survived atrocities, hope is something that got them through in the latter case, or that fuels their happiness in the former. So, I try to hold on to hope despite all my uncertainty.
– Manthipe Moila
Body
More power in the thighs,
says the swimming instructor.
Less bend at the knee. I am to use
my arms to cut through
the water like this, 이렇게,
she shows me, slicing the air.
Does a knife bend? She asks,
her foggy face too
close to mine.
I shake my head,
struggling to keep the water from
dragging me with its strong arms.
When she asks why I am so
tense lately, I want to say because
my love went back home,
his is an arm that renders
me into a sweet song, makes
something buoyant out of me.
I want to say because
right now my body is
heavier than water.
You are a Light Woman
I join the shadows cast
by the rays streaming into
the room. Here, I am
a window
-ed creature,
single-paned, part glass,
part what passes through it.
shadowed
I wear myself in like this,
unencumbered
by the fabric of skin,
unpunctuated by body.
look how seamless the line
form
the woman. look
touched
by
light.