Say the World Podcast Transcript: Episode 9, Busisiwe Mahlangu

[music: "Gymnopédie No. 1" by T. Bless & the Professionals]

Mike Meginnis:  
You're listening to Say the World: an International Writing Podcast. My name is Mike Meginnis. I'm the Communications Coordinator at the International Writing Program.

Christopher Merrill:  
And I'm Christopher Merrill, director of the IWP, as we call it.

MM:  
This week, we are mostly going to be talking with Busisiwe Mahlangu, who is a poet, playwright, and fiction writer from South Africa. For this conversation, you're out of town, so we had the good fortune, though, that actually in the office behind me as I speak, we work with Romeo Oriogun, who is a poet of great acclaim and accomplishment himself. And so he sat in for the interview and was a natural, I basically let him take over. I basically was not particularly involved in this one, but I was really enjoying listening. And that was my main contribution.

CM:  
Why not? Romeo has an expert handle on writing throughout Africa. He himself is from Nigeria, and was very much in tune with Busi.

MM:  
It was funny, she said that she had basically finished one short story and published it somewhere, and he was like, Oh, yeah, that was a great story. I remember reading that. It was like, Oh, wow. Yeah, you're you're at another level of familiarity. I'm, I'm jealous. This was also the conversation that we recorded from the 2023 residency where we laughed by far the most. I was actually really nervous that it would be hard to edit because laughter echoes in these rooms. And it was like, I don't know what this is going to be when I get to it. But it turned out really well.

CM:  
Laughter is the best medicine for writers too.

MM:  
One special thing that I want to note about this is we begin with Busi's poetry which she generally writes in English. And so there's no translation there. But then at the end of this episode, you'll hear a poem that she wrote in Zulu, for which there is no translation into English currently, or there wasn't at the time of recording. So it's just a little special treat, you get to hear the music of probably an unfamiliar language to you. And I really enjoyed that.

CM:  
And what that does is to remind us that she is yet another poet who's operating in one language, but in fact, there's another language or two or three behind everything that she writes in English. And that makes for a richer work. 

MM:  
Absolutely. Another thing that kind of related to that, that we talked about a fair amount is the sort of different discursive registers that are brought to her work by the experience of having read in more performance-oriented environments, and then writing with those in mind after the fact. And that's something that has come up with other people that we spoke with as well. That was a conversation that we had with Soonest Nathaniel.

CM:  
She's writing not just for the page, but also for the stage. And that shapes every decision she makes rhythmically. And in terms of the imagery she's following through the course of the poem.

MM:  
One of the things that has been really interesting to me to learn about in working here, I think I've talked about this in the interview as well, is the differences in cultures when it comes to readings, performances, giving performative readings in public, which we treat at the IWP as one of the sort of main culminating efforts that you do while you're here, right, because in the US, we have a very reading-focused literary culture. This despite the fact that generally speaking, my experience is that most people don't really love being present for readings, like most people don't want to listen to them. And writers do enjoy giving them but often not quite enough to put in the sort of effort that somebody like Busi does to make sure that it's a good experience for the audience. 

CM:  
Exactly. 

MM:  
Is there a time or a place that you have particularly enjoyed giving a reading?

CM:  
Oh, I often love giving readings, but I'm remembering one right now, even as you were saying that, we had a very small crowd, this poet went on for so long, that people started drifting away. And by the time that reading was over, I looked around and there was only one person left and I said, Well, I guess I don't have to read tonight.

MM:  
You had been freed from the obligation. Yeah, I mean, this is what writers talk about when we talk about readings in the US mostly, right? 

CM:  
What's the worst reading? 

MM:  
Yeah, and all the people—it's almost always the same story. It's the person who, who took too long, who went too far. The one— 

CM:  
That's the unforgivable sin. 

MM:  
Yes. The one that kills me is when I was in grad school, everybody would do a sort of culminating reading at the end of  their three years, there was a three year program. And they would give a reading, and it was sort of an introduction to a visiting writer, right, it was part of our visiting writers series. And so I think you and I would assume that the norm is, you don't read for that long because there's somebody who's a bigger deal than you who needs some time, and you don't know how long they're gonna take. But we had this one person in particular—of course, we were students, so like, people were flagrantly violating the sort of contract all over the place. But there was one person in particular, who wrote a letter to his graduating class, which was itself longer than most short stories. And he read the letter. And then he said, and now I will read my story. And he read the story. And then the visiting writer went too long. He gave a reading that was, on its own, inappropriately lengthy, and by the end of that I wanted to die. Yeah.

CM:  
But—by way of contrast, a really wonderful novelist and short story writer Bob Shacochis, when we were really young, he was a waiter at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and they would host a reading every few days. And they had three minutes apiece, but his stories were quite long. So he bought the time from six other writers, three minutes apiece. And the fact of the matter is, the story was so great, everybody was on the edge of their seats the entire time. And I thought, ah, this guy, he's, he's, he's going to he's going to do great things in the writing world.

MM:  
Did he announced that he had made the purchase? Was that part of the performance?

CM:  
Oh yeah, he had done that. But the guy who was running the thing was my late friend, the Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali, and he said, he bought eighteen minutes worth and he still went nineteen minutes. Except Shahid everybody loved the reading.

MM:  
That's really good. Well, let's get right to Busi.

[transition music: "Hazy Sky" by nuer self]

Busisiwe Mahlangu:  
This poem is titled "Violation," and it is from my book Surviving Loss. My anger is a log in a fire, did not start the flame but burned. Soon. There'll be no one to blame when I tend to ash. The inferno in my chest is a prison. A person who's hurt me before cannot do it again. I have them drink the fuel they poured on my feet. This anger did not start the flame. But that explosion is all of it. All of me. My anger bent my tears. My anger molded my chest a shield. My anger taught my breath to be gasoline. No one fought for me. My anger did, fought for the woman in my blood and the children never touched the fire but they feel the warmth. This is protection. This is a volcano erupting to save us. This is titled "Undoing a River." I begin each morning stretching my arms, counting parts of me that escaped the night. My body is in saltwater, but nothing can heal it. I lay my body on the floor and start fixing. I pull it out of the water. I dig it out of a wound. It bleeds out on the mat, and I say it's not your fault the pain swallows you. Every morning. I check my body for intruders. I dig into the sores, make it a difficult place to live in, all this medicine made my body strange. All the prayers made a sink. My body belongs to anyone trying to save it. My mama and her church, so I let them have it. My mama and her church, so I let them have it. With their prayers and saltwater. But my body makes love when it belongs to me. I know a body makes love even when it is sick. The undoing of a river is a waterfall. A body makes love. My name is Busisiwe Mahlangu. I am a writer, poet, performer, playwright, short fiction writer from Mamelodi. I tend to do many things because as a freelancer I tend to believe that I have so much time and then I try something new. So when I'm not writing, I run a jewelry business. I make earrings, I make neck pieces, I make bracelets, something that I feel feeds into my writing. Sometimes when I'm beading it will just cross my mind to be like, Ah, I need to write this poem. And when I'm writing, I feel like it channels back into the beading. So I think when it comes to art, I feel like it's just that same frequency no matter what you're creating, or the medium. So I just allow myself to experiment even in new genres that I've never tapped into before. I am from Mamelodi. I grew up in a township called Mamelodi. It actually just means "mother of melodies." I don't sing. I just write, but I think the music of the space because it's such a jazz township really influenced my writing. I think of myself as a feminist. I think of myself as a pan-Africanist. I want to make work that makes people resonate and actually connects different people.

MM:  
Well, thank you for joining us. I thought I would ask this later. But since you brought it up, I feel like it's a good thing to ask. Now, I was interested in looking at your jewelry work and thinking about how it connected with your other creative practices. I was curious, like, what your experience is of creating jewelry, what it provides to you that writing poetry or other forms doesn't, and also, what it has in common with those forms.

BM:  
So I would say I started just creating jewelry for myself as a performer, I wanted to look nice on stage, I had a bald head and I felt like, Wow, big earrings would actually be beautiful while I'm on stage performing, and started watching some few YouTube videos. They did not have the big, extra colorful style that I was looking for. But it did teach me some techniques. And I started making for myself, and when I went to performances, people would ask, where did you get your earrings, I made them, oh my god, you should sell them. So I think it's mostly the audience that gave me the idea to make the jewelry and sell it. But I did not do that. Initially, I just did it for friends. And they came back with the feedback people want this jewelry. So, in terms of audience, I will say most of the people who would get my jewelry will be the artists. And it will be from the spaces where I perform, because I'll bring my book along with my earrings and set up a table and sell it. But that is the finished product. Creating process of it is that like beading allows me to listen to music, to listen to a book, to listen to poetry performances. So, in practice, I feel like that is connected, especially as a consumer of art while I'm creating, then I can listen to a poem or listen to an audiobook or a podcast. So yeah, so I tend to just stop beading and then go and write, and then come back to beat again.

RO:  
Okay, that's interesting. So now let's get into poetry. I think I remember, I still remember the first time I heard about you, a few years ago, Bash Amuneni, I think he went to South Africa. 

BM:  
Poetry Africa.

RO:  
Poetry Africa. And I remember him being there because I was already in the States. And he was like, Hey, you need to listen to this person and read her poems because I'm always on the lookout for poems, poetry, poets. Anything that has to do with poetry on the continent. And I remember reading some of your poems and listening to some of them, the ones that you perform. I think I wanted to ask what does silence do for you and your poems, because I think your poems talk about the body a lot, talk about healing and what the body has survived. What has generational present—in all of that, there's a silence I find in your poem. I remember one of the lines that stood out to me was talking about my grandmother survived this and my mother survived, now I have a scar. I think about scars and I think about silence, also, the silence of a scar, it's present, but so, you know, it doesn't say anything other than what it is. So I wanted to ask what does silence do for you as a poet, and how, how do you use it when writing because it's so present in your work, and it's done in a way that's so brilliant and so powerful?

BM:  
Thank you. And that is a very heavy question. But I'll just start by saying the few lines you mentioned. My mother's mother has done the suffering for my mother. My mother has done the suffering for me. This is how I inherit a scar. So, silence for me, I feel, when I first started writing, all I wanted to do was get all my ideas, no matter how bad they are, on paper. I just wanted to write and take up the writing space as a space where I can speak, so from that point, I felt like writing was giving me sort of a space to not be silenced, to explore my ideas, to say what I stand for, to take my position in matters, open space for conversation. It allowed me to do that. And I think, because the space was available to me in a time when I felt like I couldn't have the space to speak, that reflects in my way that there is always that hunger, that, am I saying the right thing? Am I not saying the right thing? When do I keep quiet? When do I speak? And yeah, I think it's still like an ongoing investigation with myself as a writer, but as well as a performer. Most of my poems, the way they look on paper is actually shaped by how they sound to me as a performer, or when I'm on stage performing them. The pause becomes a line break. And if the pause is so big, I'm like, why don't we just take this weight and throw it to the other side of the paper and see what that looks visually on paper? So I try to reflect that silence, the pause, on paper like that. I don't know if it's working for the readers, but I imagine they're sitting there reading, and then there's this big space that allows them to breathe in, and then they keep going. So yeah, I think as well, like, I've come to realize that sometimes silence is necessary. Sometimes a pause is necessary. Like you don't always have to speak, and you don't always have to fill the space, and sometimes things can just be.

RO:  
Amazing. I think before I ask the next question, I wanted to ask a follow-up question. You spoke about performance, like stage. And I mean, it's all over your work. It's, it's one of the brilliant things about your work. I think that in the South African poetry scene there's this intersection between poetry on the page, and poetry being performed. And it's done in this very beautiful way. You can't distinguish one from the other except to witness it. And I kept thinking of that lineage of performance and page, whether it's yourself, whether it's Koleka, whether it's [name] in the UK, Dennis Smith in the US, the sense of it is kind of like renaissance in the past ten years of poetry being performed, and poetry been written by certain poets. And I wanted to ask you, where does that come from for you? What's the lineage? And how do you balance it? Because it's, it's a difficult thing to do. As someone who writes for myself, it's so difficult to, you know, perform, and then write the same thing.

Speaker 1  
I started poetry when I was in primary school. It was just submissions into youth magazines, like our English teacher was encouraging us to write and submit. And I think, I think of that period of my life as like, I was just imitating poetry, anything I could find that I liked. I tried to write something similar. And I didn't, I felt bad at that point, especially when one of the pieces got published. I felt so bad because I wanted to explain to people that, No, I didn't really write it, but I wrote it, but I didn't. But also just being a kid felt like, maybe I should keep it to myself. Should I tell them? And I just remember struggling with that. Yeah, so, and I think like that stage in primary school where I was imitating art was very important, because when I was imitating the poetry that I was reading, because I was a scholar, without even realizing, I was reading and when I liked it, I tried to write. So like, I feel like my entry into poetry was the page. And, when I was in grade seven, my English teacher was like, You don't want to read this in front of the assembly? So I went home, and I memorized the poem, and I performed it in front of the school because I thought that was, that was what was expected from me. I didn't know that I could have just read it from the piece of paper. 

RO:  
That's really interesting.

BM:  
Because I thought like, it will be similar to what we do with like presentations in class, like you have to know your speech. Then you deliver what you—so that was my transition into the stage. And then in high school, I was part of the poetry sessions in our school, which was like informal, and we will just meet up every week, and we will share songs, singers will sing, poets will poet. Sometimes there'll be a dancer or rapper. And it was just such a beautiful space. Fast forward to high school. I go to university, at first university, I do engineering. Do not ask me about that, I didn't even finish it. But I'm so glad it happened. And while I was in Joburg, I learned that there's poetry competitions, poetry slams, and that's when I enter into the spoken word culture. And it's something that I have been doing, I've been writing and memorizing my pieces, but what was lacking was the performance aspect of it. I felt like it was just the writing and my voice that was involved in the performance, and I had to learn to actually get my body involved into the reading as well because I just used to perform there, like, my hands by the side of my legs, and I'll just be like, duh duh duh duh duh duh, and I'll do the pieces. And I was really awkward on stage, and I had to learn to be a performer. It's, it's a hard thing to balance, especially in the world of poetry slams, because as much as you're writing the poems for yourself, and you understand these poems are yours, at the back of your head, there's always that idea that these poems are going to get judged, they're going to get scored. And you need to have something that will actually capture the judges and the audiences and you need to be memorable, and you need to be spectacular. And there's like, just so much expectation. So I felt like that was a moment where I used to struggle, because sometimes, especially the way I approach poetry, I want it to be simple, but still has, like, I don't know how to explain this, I want to play with language. But I want the language to still be simple, but I want to play with it, I want to stretch it, and still have the poem be understood. You know, so I don't want my poems to be so far away from people to access. But still, I want to be an artist and play and experiment and be creative. So it was hard, because sometimes you will be creative, and the audience will miss the line that you thought they're gonna like, and you're there on stage. And it's sort of discouraging or disturbing, you're like, Ah, this is the line where people were supposed to clap. And then they were supposed to shout and you know, go crazy. So yeah, the stage is nice, you get instant feedback from the audience, especially if it's an audience, like the South African audience, they will engage with you and you're on stage, they will not keep quiet and watch you unless they don't like what you're delivering. But if they like it, when you're onstage, you will know. So that's what I liked. And then the page, like, you never know, on the page, if someone else is gonna like it or not, you send it to journals, it gets rejected. And then you're like, is this a bad poem? Is it a good poem? So yeah, the stage is very, I feel more isolated as a writer on page. The stage is more engaging, it gives you feedback, you give them energy, they, they give it back, it's so interactive, it's addictive in fact.

MM:
Yeah, there's a there's an element of interaction with things that are written too, right? But you don't have the same, like you said, you don't have the same feedback. When you're performing for an audience, there's the paired pressures, like you're—I'm just summarizing, basically, what you said—the idea that like, on the one hand, you need to demonstrate and perform virtuosity, because that's what sets you apart from the competition. But on the other hand, the audience will not even know that you have done anything virtuosic unless they're able to kind of come along with you, right? That's what makes them able to recognize the line that they're gonna clap for, they're gonna snap or whatever, is the fact that you have written it in a way that allows them to kind of do it with you, right? And I feel like that is though a really undervalued skill, in writing things on the page, knowing that there is an audience member who is reading, who actually does have to do that same work of doing this, the lines along with you, creating the poem as they read it with you, and like creating that space for them to do that. So I was interested in that, because, in at least one interview, you gave the advice to young writers who are interested in poetry of, Go out and do open mics and learn from that experience. That kind of answers the question that I wanted to ask about, which is like, what they would get out of that. Right? Something I wondered about in relationship to that is your bio mentions that you have performed in a lot of different places, right? Examples were Mozambique, Nigeria, Sweden, and the US. And I'm curious, because especially working at IWP, I become aware all the time of all these like blind spots, I have all these ways in which I'm a little parochial or whatever, right? And one is that I didn't appreciate fully how different reading cultures are. Like the performance of reading a literary work in different places. And I wonder what your experience has been, what you've learned from performing, from reading for people in all these different spaces and all these different cultures.

BM:
Yeah. I think it's gonna come back to what we spoke about silence. So the first time I performed outside of South Africa was in Sweden, and like the audience was quiiiiiet! Really, really quiet. I could even tell when I'm like stepping on my Bs when I'm like be- bu-, and the mic echoes back that like the Bs and the Ps, like I could hear that kind of feedback while I'm on stage because they were so quiet, and I just had to keep going. And that has actually made me realize I've performed in like all kinds of places. I've performed in taverns, I've performed in clubs, I've performed in coffee shops, I've performed in very, I don't know, corporate kind of venues, where everyone is so serious about the events of the day, and in art spaces. So I think what I know is that, as a writer, my job on stage is to channel the poem. Even if like the audience, even if I have a small moment where I think the audience is not responding, or they don't understand what I'm saying, I have to keep going. And I learned that when I was in Sweden, even though I've had experiences in South Africa, where I'll get to a place and the audience will be quiet, I never had to do it back to back to actually see that, Oh, this is the culture of this particular space. But then we got to Stockholm. And there's a, there's a poetry organization called Revolution Poetry, and we got there, and it was like, Black people and people of color in the room and, and then we performed and you could just see their replies, and you could just see them feel the poem. So different cultures experienced the pieces differently, experience art differently. And it is also, what I'm learning, it is also an honor sometimes for people to just keep quiet, and listen and not be part of of the piece or scream or shout or clap their hands, but just sit and listen. It's also active. Even if it's not loud, it's active. And I have grown to become very grateful for that. Because sometimes I really just want the audience to shut up.

RO:  
Oh, that's interesting. Speaking of performance, your collection Surviving Loss was adapted for theater. I was like doing some research, trying to like, look at that process. But also, you know, what it means. I wanted to ask what it means to you to have your work—because I have been having poetry adapted, which is also a very South African thing. Of course, I've seen like about three or four poets who their work gets adapted for theater. I'm always jealous of that, by the way. But I want to ask what the journey was like for you. I also know that you have made certain demands. It has to be a young Black woman. It has to, you know, I know that you're a feminist, but I wanted to ask, what does that process, what did it meant for you, to be seen that way, and your work to be shown that way.

Speaker 1  
So when we adapted Surviving Loss, it was so exciting because I get to take up the role of a producer. And I got to decide, like, who makes it into the cast. And then who directs, and also I get to perform my pieces on stage with the cast. It was actually beautiful, you know, it was, oh my word, I'm thinking back now, I miss it. It was so beautiful. Firstly, as an artist who, at the time, I was just working full time as an artist, to be given a budget and say, Here, execute your vision. And then being able to approach people knowing that you have something to give them was, it was nice, it made me realize that I want to do art. I want to do writing with the financial backing because it's easier than without the financial backing.

MM:  
I also would like— (Laughter)

Speaker 1  
I want that! Yeah, so that was, it was just freeing, because then I could really, really approach people that I wanted to collaborate with. And, luckily, they said yes. So we rehearsed for like almost two months back to back. And closer to the staging, we were, the week of the same, we were just coming back home late at night. And it was, I was like, This is so unhealthy. And I really felt bad for my cast, but they kept pushing me they're like, No, we must get this right. That process really grew me as a performer, we will have like open rehearsals where the theater staff would sit in and like these are people who know what makes a good show because they're running the theater. And they will just sit in and watch the production and afterwards they'll give us like this long list of feedback and I will want to cry. But then just having a team that was like, Oh yeah, no, we can because I was, I was struggling with them, with some of the poems and they were like so encouraging: No, we can figure it out, and how to manage the dance and, and the music. So it was like a three cast play. And we had dance, music, and poetry, but what we did is that we took the poems and created like this, a fragmented story with them., and like, they were connecting and try to build characters around the existing poetry. So even like the scripting of that process was exciting, because I got to see more possibilities for the work that they can exist. Like this can be an actual story, we can link them together, we can build a new world with existing work. I really love that. I enjoyed it, to be honest.

MM:  
It's okay if like a specific example doesn't come to mind, because this is maybe a little in the weeds. But I wonder if there is a particular example of like a thing—you talked about the process of like trying over and over again, to get something to feel right. Do you remember any like particular thing that was a sticking point? Like what kind of problem kept coming up and how you ended up solving it?

Speaker 1  
So what happened was that I was a very serious performer, like, very serious, and my director was saying that, You know what, you need to like loosen up. I was like, very in everything I would perform I would just perform it with my hands, but the rest of my body would not engage with the piece. And so during rehearsals, I had to do a lot of silly things. I had to perform my poem while running around our rehearsal space. And then I had to do my poem really fast until I ran out of breath. And then I had to do it really slow until I got bored of it. And every time it's like, my director always had like, these weird things. And she was pulling them out of a hat, I thought, and she would just do this. And I was just always so worried about rehearsals, like, Oh, what weird thing am I gonna do today? So I think that was it, like, my entire body was not engaging in the piece, because I was so used to performing in front of a mic stand, or holding the mic in my hand. But then when it came to theater, like my whole body had to be involved, there was no mic stand, the story was not like I was not performing the peace standing in one place, I had to keep moving all over the stage. Because the story the way we had designed, it was moving, it was moving, and it involves movement. So even myself, I was expected, even though I'm not a dancer, I was expected to contribute to that movement to be part of the story so that everything gels together. So I think that was the hardest part to, you know, shake it out, shake out that awkwardness and let the body be part of the story.

MP:  
It is, it is a huge difference. Right? Like, when I'm preparing for a reading, there will always be like those two or three points where I'm like, and this is where I'll look up, or it's where I'll like gesture, I'll point at something, or I'll count like one, two, three, with my fingers. And those are huge gestures in the context of reading into a microphone behind the podium. And they are not huge gestures onstage. So that makes sense that you would, there would be a long unlocking process to get to the point where you're like, engaging with that space in that environment in that audience. That's, that's really, I feel for you.

BM:  
Yeah, and I think it made me realize that you can be the writer, but then once you get into rehearsals, you need to stop—okay, maybe you don't need to stop, but like, you need to realize that now you are a performer in rehearsal. And this is a script, yes, you can change it. But this is a script and you must narrate the script, you are translating the work that is on page, you're translating it for the stage, and it made me realize that it's good, rehearsals are good, you're gonna feel silly, you're gonna feel like, you don't know what you're doing and whatever, whatever. But the more you do it, that's actually how you unlock a better way of performance. And now I'm like in two communities, I'm with the spoken word communities, and I'm with the readers, 

RO:  
Oh the readers! (Laughter)

BM:  
And I feel like, Oh, my God, thank God there's a community where we can just read our poems because I really needed that pressure to be taken off.

RO:  
Welcome to the boring side of life.

BM:  
Sometimes it's necessary. You know, sometimes, it's like, I wrote this poem, and I just want to read it. I don't want to do the theatrics. I don't want to perform it. This is the piece. It's either you like it as it is or you don't!

RO:  
I get you. I really do get you because I mean, I don't know how to do the performance. Also, I just put my head down on the podium and just read.

RO:  
But you read beautifully. 

RO:  
I think it's—

BM:  
You were so beautiful we were crying at Prairie Lights! I'm like, What are you doing to us?

RO:  
I try. Anyway.

MM:  
Enough of these compliments, we have to move on!

RO:  
You talked about movements earlier on, but I'm interested about how that movement have happened for you in poetry. I'm also interested in, you know, the local work you do in South Africa with—I might butcher this... 

BM:  
Lwazilubanzi.

RO:  
Lwazilubanzi.. See, I, so I always wanted to call it like Lwazilubanzi.

BM:  
Yeah, that's right. 

RO:  
Oh, that's right.

BM:  
Lwazilubanzi.

RO:  
So I'm thinking about the work you do, the work of poetry, as a tool for healing. And I always think about healing as this movement from one space to another. It has to do with, whether it's social movements, whether it's one that allows you to tap into what you cannot do before. And I mean, and find a way through life. I'm also thinking about movement as this very pan-Africanist idea of healing among ourselves, especially now in which we've never been more divided, as we are right now. Shut up on the continent. I'm thinking, what do you see your poetry doing in that aspect? What is movement in this, as it pertains to healing, as it pertains to poetry, or whatever you think movement is? What does that mean to you as a person? Whether it's like local, what you're doing in Pretoria, or whatever it's like outside of the borders of South Africa.

BM:  
So, movement, I'll start with Lwazilubanzi. So the idea of Lwazilubanzi, which actually means like, limitless knowledge, is to bring the arts into schools, into public schools, in schools and townships and rural areas. And so far, what we've done is work with schools in townships and have writing workshops and performance workshops and sort of share the knowledge about the writing opportunities in the country and have them access that. So the idea is to build a bridge. And I think maybe the movement there would be the movement of knowledge, there creating a space where we can share knowledge, creating a space where young writers can write and feel affirmed in that practice. So I think that will be how to explain movement and movement in terms of exchanges. I really also believe in writers actually doing these exchanges amongst themselves. Like, we don't always have to wait for an institution to be like, Come to this place and do this. And if it's possible, to actually do it amongst ourselves. I can come to Nigeria, and we can spend two weeks or a week writing and these are things that still need money. So how do we do that? By ourselves? How do we keep creating even if we don't have grants, even if we don't have scholarships? How do we keep creating? That is like a question that is always keeping me up at night because I want to weather whatever's happening. I want to create, you know, and I want to be able to do that, even if I don't have any backing in any support, so that the work that I'm creating is not always reliant on who is paying my bills, you know, and when I speak about, like, the exchanges among artists, my friend and I, my best friend, Xolile Mabuza, she's also a poet and a writer. We collaborated with an artist in Lesotho, [     ]. And what we did was that we put up money together like our smaller coins, and we got into a taxi and we went to listen to if you don't know the sorts of like, it's a country that is inside South Africa. It's a small beautiful country. It's so beautiful. It snows there. It really snows. (Laughter) And they are on the mountains. My favorite place! Yeah, and then we got there, and then we performed piece—no one was paying us. No one was backing us up. We perform pieces, we shared poems, we exchanged, we learn more about Lesotho. We came with our artwork, we sold, we went back home. So even if it doesn't have to be in different countries, it can be you and your friend, you can collaborate, you can make something. So it's just like, what do we have in our position to make the work that we want to make right now? And I think the key to that is always collaboration, is community. It's, you know, being open to failing: to doing it and failing, to doing it and then yeah, okay, now I'm also like trying to write grants and to get my work funded. But I'm gonna wait, and what do I do while I'm waiting? How do I keep creating? I just want to make the art at the end of the day. 

RO:  
Thank you. 

BM:  
Yeah, but I also want to get paid for it. (Laughter)

RO:  
But that's very beautiful. It's, it's, it's really beautiful. The need to always collaborate, and what do we do when we wait? No, that's, that's amazing.

BM:  
Yeah, it's tough and sometimes not practical. But it's, you know, there's always something you can do. It can be a little thing. Can just be editing one poem. Doesn't have to be like big what not, can be like exchanging poems, I edit your work, you edit mine, things like that.

MM:  
So speaking of what you do while you're waiting, or in this case, maybe while you're just doing, what have you been working on here? 

BM:  
(Laughter)

MM:  
You can just leave it at that. That's a great answer.

RO:  
That's an interesting one.

MM:  
I love the mystery of that. Well, we can all wonder what that meant.

BM:  
Yes, thank you.

RO:  
Yeah, but it's interesting. I think like the beauty of residencies sometimes might not also be writing, it might be soaking up things. I find that when I go to residencies, I just read a lot, I make friends. I try to understand what people are doing. And then I go home, and the writing just appears.

BM:
Yes! Thank you so much for validating my experience. (Laughter)

MM:  
Yeah, you don't need to feel bad—I mean, we we know when we're setting this up, because you know, this has been happening for a long time. Like, I personally am surprised when someone says that they have been writing a lot, because I think what you're describing— 

RO:  
I am too. 

MM:  
Yeah, like— 

BM:  
Yeah.

MM:  
It's a weird place to write. It's a weird thing to fly across the world, and then meet a whole bunch of people and be in an unfamiliar environment in a hotel, that may be nothing like the sort of place that you prefer to write all your routines destroyed. Everything that you usually do removed from your life. And now you're supposed to work, right, which like, for me, my writing is so routine driven. I'm confident I would get no writing done during this, I would read, I would learn things, it would, like you're saying, it would fuel the writing when I got home. But that's, but that's it, right? Like, it would not happen here.

BM:  
I had a theory. And my theory involves two things. I can sleep anywhere and everywhere. It doesn't matter what's happening, I can sleep. And then I can write—

RO:  
I feel you, I feel you on that. I can sleep on this chair right now.

BM:  
Right! I slept, I once fell asleep in a train standing holding on to the pole. Listen, I can sleep anywhere. And then I also think I can write anywhere. Like I can just write, like, I don't, I don't depend on the environment. And I will say I have been writing in the residence, but it hasn't, like, I write, and I move on from whatever I wrote. And then I write, and mind you, I'm writing short fiction while I'm here, so most of the stories are incomplete. And they exist in this world where incomplete stories exist. And I never get to finish them. So I'm always like, Oh, have I been writing ever? But my fingers are tingling, and I type, and that's it. That's what I've been doing.

RO:  
Do you think that's a very poet thing? Because it's like, almost every poet I know wants to write a novel or short story or whatever. And I would say, of all the people I have talked to who wants to write, you know, prose, including myself, I think only about five, six percent have actually completed it. 

BM:  
Oh my god. 

RO:  
So everyone is just writing like these beautiful sentences and then midway, you realize that, Oh, well, fiction doesn't have to do with reading alone or beauty alone, that it has to do with the rigor of how people actually interact. Which I think poets don't do well, so... (Laughter)

BM:  
I love short fiction. I am obsessed. 

RO:  
That's interesting. 

BM:  
With short fiction. And I think, actually, I would like to say poets make good fiction writers and maybe that's like the division I like to live in so that I can—

RO:  
The ones who complete it!

BM:  
I have one completed short story that is published!

RO:  
Oh, I think I read it—

BM:  
You read it? Oh!

RO:  
It was beautiful, it was beautiful.

MM:  
This is a subject of some resentment for me because I know so many people, and they're mostly self-loathing prose writers who say poets are always the best writers of fiction because they write all the prettiest sentences. And it always makes me a little bit crazy because it's like, I want the prose writers I know to love themselves enough to believe—(Laughter)—that they know how to do anything, right? And like, like they don't. It is actually like a skill in and of itself, but that said, 

BM:  
Oh my God.

MM:  
A lot of the time when when a poet writes something, and it gets finished, it is good. I mean, that's, that's true.

BM:  
I would also like to say, like, the fiction writers—they do have something...good...that... (Laughter) I'm not done! It feels awkward. Okay, the fiction writers, they do have something good going on that I envy. 

MM:  
Yeah. 

BM:  
And it's that like, I feel like prose also needs like a certain level of simplicity. And— 

RO:  
Oh, wow. Okay. 

BM:  
Yeah. And like, like, and clarity, simplicity and clarity like the, the work has to be open. We're so—I envy, I envy that so much. Because I'm like, trying to explain that the character's angry, and why am I writing a poem about a character's anger? 

RO:  
I know.

BM:  
And sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't. So just like that practicality that fiction prose writers have with language is what I really, really envy.

RO:  
They also have discipline, which is one thing I realized, they sit down and just write, and in my head, I'm like, How do you do this? Because I mostly write my book in three, four weeks, and I just play around then, I'm like...

BM:  
Yeah, and let me—I actually, you know, when I was starting to write short fiction, I was always on YouTube being like "Tips...for...writers." But one of the beautiful tips that I got was like, you sort of schedule time to write. I don't remember who, who said this. But then, during that time, you can either write or do nothing, it's fine if you don't do anything, you can scroll on your phone or go in the internet. You can either type or handwrite. Or do nothing. And if you do nothing, you just sit and stare at the wall or your blank page. And eventually you get bored enough, then it's better to write. That has worked for me.

MM:  
Yeah. 

RO:  
Oh, wow. 

MM:  
Yeah, no, it's, yeah, that's great.

RO:  
I'll try it and see.

BM:  
Try it! 

MM:  
It works.

BM:  
You get bored, you're like, Ugh. And then you can, as long as you treat this time interval—it doesn't even have to be long. You can write one thousand words in thirty minutes, or even less. So it doesn't have to be like, 

RO:  
I know.

BM:  
a long time frame. But you have to honor it. You can only do two things. It's either you're writing or you're doing nothing. And anything outside of that, it's, you're not honoring.

RO:  
So. So this leads to, like, my own last question, because I know we're, it's time. It's time, but there's no time. But anyway, when I hear you talking about prose, there's this kind of like, oh, the ability to sit with like ugliness, which I think prose writers do a lot. Why for poetry. There's this need to write through ugliness into beauty. And I keep—because once we were talking, I was thinking about it. I was thinking about your work. I was like, This is  gonna be my last question. I keep quiet. And I was like, there's so much like trauma and pain. But there's also so much gesture in truth like beauty. Well, it's like true language, true reading. And a whole lot that goes into your work. Like what is like, how do you achieve that, because it's a very difficult thing to achieve. Like, I tend to attribute it—it's so, it's like this tenderness, it's the space in which everything breaks down and kind of like this phonics, like, something comes up and what comes up for you after that writing? And what that done for you as a writer and as a poet?

BM:  
Yeah, you know, as you're speaking, I'm thinking of this analogy, and it might not even work, but now that I think of it I must share it. 

RO:  
Okay!

BM:  
You know, like with cartoons, and then like they run over a cliff, and they run, and they're in the air. 

MM:  
Yeah. Wile E. Coyote is hanging. He hasn't looked down yet. So he doesn't fall yet.

BM:  
Yeah, so he's on the air. And once they look down, then they start falling. 

RO:  
Yeah.

BM:  
I think some of the things that have to do with writing, I am doing it, and once I start thinking, How am I doing this? That's when I crash. (Laughter) So I am, I am doing it, and I just have to keep doing it without questioning myself. There will be a later me who's an editor who will try and say, No, this doesn't make sense. You can't keep running on air for like a whole poem or whatever, whatever. And then try to shelter the peace. So I think in that kind of discovery where I allow myself to just discover what I'm creating, some of it that I tend to discover would be the beauty. Even if I thought I was writing a poem that is like sitting in grief, then I just keep going and uncovering and unfolding and then there is, like, a beauty or some bit of hope. So I will say, it's not intentional, and every time I've tried to be intentional about it, I was falling down the cliff. 

RO:  
Interesting. 

BM:  
Yeah. 

RO:  
Thank you.

BM:  
Yeah. 

RO:  
Thank you.

BM:  
So, I don't know much about technique. I don't know technique.

RO:  
This is not a question, but for someone who claims not to know much about technique, your poems are doing what they need to do.

BM:  
Thank you. Thank you for that.

MM:  
I think we can, I think we can end it there. 

BM:  
Mmm.

MM:  
I think this is a good place to stop.

BM:  
Yes, I think it is, or else we can talk forever.

RO:  
Yes!

MM:  
Those are the two options.

RO:  
Officially my—

RO:  
We can either stop or keep going.

RO:  
This is officially my first time as a podcast co-host.

BM:  
Oh my God, you were amazing!

MM:  
You did great. You did great.

BM:  
You did so good. 

RO:  
Thank you!

MM:  
All right, I'm gonna stop recording.

BM:  
Oh my God, that was so much fun.

[transition music: "Hazy Sky" by nuer self]

BM:  
[Busisiwe Mahlangu reads her poem in Zulu.]

[music: "Gymnopédie No. 1 - DoGBeaT Remix" by DoGBeaT]

MM:  
Say the World: an International Writing Podcast is a production of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. IWP programming is primarily funded by the University of Iowa and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State, with additional funding provided by organizations like the Doris Duke Foundation, as well as donors like you. If you'd like to donate to the IWP, go to bit.ly/iwp-support. Links to further information and additional credits for this episode are in the show notes.