"Return to the beginning": Megan Ross interviews Sihle Ntuli about Owele

In our latest monthly interview with an uHlanga poet, Megan Ross finds out more about the genesis and revelations of Sihle Ntuli’s third collection, Owele.

Congratulations on the launch of Owele! I can't wait to read it. Could you talk a bit about this collection, and to what Daily Maverick describes as

"...a deeply personal return, not to a single place, but to a confluence of memory, language, and landscape"?

Much appreciated, Megan. Firstly, I will begin by giving thanks to God for all the abundant blessings. Before the collection begins, in the dedication I say ‘Kubo labo abasibonayo isidingo sokubhekana ngqo! nesimnyama sabo’. Here ‘isimnyama’ is referring to a number of things, all of which would require the kind of cleansing one would go to do at a river. I had been playing around in my mind with the idea of approaching a waterfall for the purpose of letting go. The poems I’ve written are in the pursuit of liberation. One of the revelations I had was to return to the beginning. 

This collection is, correct me if I'm wrong, written in both IsiZulu and English. Could you speak to what it has been like writing in both your mother tongue, and in, to quote two of the lines of your poem, a language that has done – and undone – so much?

“what is home if our neighbours only speak to me in English,
oblivious to what the language has done?”

The isiZulu spoken in KwaMashu is not the same as what is spoken in Ulundi or Nkandla. As you go further away from the urban into the rural, the isiZulu tends to become much ‘harder’. This is to say that those of us who live in the urban areas take many liberties with our language, whereas rural isiZulu retains the traditional – not only the cultural but also the linguistic. The experience of writing Owele came with many realisations about this. I was confronted by a lot of discomfort.  

Writing in isiZulu was difficult, I would not be here if not for the invaluable input of Sandile Ngidi and Musawenkosi Cabe. Beyond layers and layers of being colonised, institutionalised, etc., there was also this issue of the overbearing presence of English. It was the suggestion of the uHlanga director and editor of Owele, Nick Mulgrew, that some poems be written in isiZulu as a way to center Isintu, and an assertion of the need to re-indigenise. 

You've paired the poems with photographs from Samora Chapman, deeply moving landscapes that capture both the violence and beauty of waters. These are 'home' waters to you. How do they feature in the collection, and could you speak a bit to what it was like to have a visual element to this collection as well? 

Since the rivers in the collection are a connecting thread throughout, Nick thought it would be a good idea to include photographs in the collection. I had previously been opposed to visuals in past collections, but much of this collection has been about trying new things and I was open to the prospect of having a visual element to my work for the first time to heighten the experience. The visuals are an accompaniment to the river poems and provide a tranquil, calming element especially when holding the book in hand.

Photo by Samora Chapman

You're a classicist and a poet. I would be so interested to know how these things work in tandem with each other, especially when you're in the process of writing poetry, and how being a classicist, perhaps, influenced the poems in Owele?

Without disavowing the classics completely, I’d warn readers of my work to not make too much of this. I studied the Classics, got my MA at Rhodes and I’m very grateful for this, but the process of my writing poetry has very little to do with the Classics. With the traditional understanding of ancient civilizations being a study of Greece and Rome, I would put it plainly that there is none of that in Owele – but there are ancient civilizations present in the pan-African and Zulu contexts. One of my mentors at Rhodes, Mr Mike Lambert, was one of the most impressive classicists I had ever come across; he understood the need for the Classics to be adaptable to its geographical context. So if the Classics are indeed present then they are there organically. 

Is this collection in any way a departure from the poems you wrote in previous collections and chapbooks? 

I believe in craft insofar as working towards the mastery of it. I understand the importance of each chapbook and collection I have written, and how they have each contributed to my journey. So to say ‘departure’ would be to premeditate that Owele would be on a road of its own; while this may indeed be the case, it's still very much part of the same legacy. With Owele I was writing poems that I wanted to write for many years, including poems I was writing concurrently with the ones in Rumblin’, The Nation and Zabalaza Republic. Owele is significant in that all of the work I had been refining is finally coming out; while it looks like it took me two years between my previous book and this one, Owele took me a lot longer to figure out.  

Where does Owele 'fit in', so to speak, with your previous work, and do you feel that this publication process with uHlanga has been any different to previous experiences?

After Rumblin’ went out of print Nick was open to me pitching Owele to him; the publication of this book was earned through vigorous writing, revisions and rewriting. My only concern was that Owele should be a body of work that lives and breathes, and so I’ve endeavored to put all my years of learning into what I feel will be a work that will make supporters of my work very proud.

I had a very difficult publication process with my most recent full-length collection – without going into too much detail, I will just say that it was tough. uHlanga provided a smoother process where I felt challenged to do my best but was still respected enough to be heard. I’ve worked with Nick previously on the very first uHlanga magazine Issue 1, alongside future stars like Genna Gardini, Thabo Jijana and Musawenkosi Khanyile, all of whom went on to have very successful publications with uHlanga. 

When you work closely with Nick and the uHlanga team you begin to understand why, in a short ten-year period, uHlanga has earned the loyalty and support of its readers. I am grateful for this association and those who will in some instances be reading my work for the first time. 

"Diplomacy between cultural worlds": Richard Whitaker and Douglas Reid Skinner on translating Catullus

In the latest of our series of interviews with uHlanga poets and translators, Megan Ross interviews Richard Whitaker and Douglas Reid Skinner, the translators of Catullus: Selected Lyric Poems, a selection from the bawdy, sometimes scandalous oeuvre of one of the late Roman world’s great poets. Their joint translation project was published in 2020 by Crane River, and is distributed by uHlanga.

What first drew you to Catullus? 

RICHARD: I first read Catullus in English, in the 1960s racy, free-verse, Penguin translation by Peter Whigham, and I was completely hooked. Catullus’s poetry was so immediate, so contemporary, by turns delicate, ferocious, tender, laugh-out-loud funny, wonderfully obscene. After I learned Latin, I enjoyed his poetry even more in the original.

DOUGLAS: A late 20th-century American book of dual translation; on close examination, it was clear the translator had wandered too far from the original texts. Richard’s 2017 translation of Homer’s Odyssey got me thinking a more accurate and contemporary Catullus might be worthwhile. 

How do you navigate the emotional and tonal range in translation?

RICHARD: It’s not easy. Catullus has a very wide emotional and tonal range, and he uses a great variety of Latin poetic meters and verse forms. You try to represent the range by selecting just the right level of English vocabulary, the right individual words, the right rhythm and form for each poem you translate.

DOUGLAS: One’s best chance of working out the subtleties of usage and cultural connotation appears to reside in finding a sense of the person in the poems and their characteristic emotional pitch.

Do you ever let your own poetic voice slip into the work, or is the goal to stay invisible?

RICHARD: One can’t “stay invisible”. Who you are, your personality, what you have read, what you have written – all of that is going to inform how you translate. You try to open yourself to the poet you are translating, to represent as much as you can of the original text, but inevitably there will something of yourself in the translation.

DOUGLAS: The first is, in varying degrees, inevitable. And invisibility is, in a way, impossible as one’s intention is to transport the other into a particular now and here of which one is a part.

What’s the biggest challenge in bringing ancient Latin into modern English without flattening its texture?

RICHARD: My answer would be like the one I gave to your question about emotional and tonal range. As a translator, you have to try and find some sort of contemporary equivalent in English to the Latin meters and words that Catullus used. If you are successful, the translation should convey now, today, the spikiness, smoothness, delicacy, or harshness that Catullus expressed then.

DOUGLAS: I like to think of a translation as a kind of diplomat who shuttles between two cultural worlds. There are always compromises to be made on both sides of the equation.

Is there one poem that gave you the most joy — or the most trouble — to translate?

RICHARD: I think that overcoming difficulties in translation also, often, brings the most pleasure. I loved the tricky challenge of trying to catch the offhand, conversational tone of a piece like poem 10: “I was hanging around idly in the Forum . . .”, where Catullus ends up embarrassed at being caught out in a white lie; or the similar tone of  the casually obscene poem 28 addressed to two mates of Catullus who have been screwed over by their boss, just as the poet was by his.

DOUGLAS: Getting the more ribald ones right – for instance, poem 80: “What’s to say, Gellius, about why your rosy lips . . .”, or 88: “What the heck does Gellius think he’s doing, naked . . .” – was the most fun. It allowed for a creative use of demotic.

What do you hope a modern reader, especially in South Africa, discovers in Catullus’s poetry today?

RICHARD: I hope that this translation can bring modern readers the same shock of delight and recognition that I felt when I first read Catullus, the sense that here was someone who seemed to be absolutely my contemporary. And I’d hope, certainly, to win new readers for Catullus in South Africa, where the poet is generally little known.

DOUGLAS: One of the extraordinary things about Catullus is his psychological contemporaneity despite a great gulf of historical time between him and us.

Sihle Ntuli's tour for Owele heads to Durban, Makhanda, Johannesburg and Cape Town

Congratulations to Sihle Ntuli, whose book Owele releases this month.

Sihle will be having four launch events around South Africa to celebrate. Please come along – all of these events are free.



Tuesday 22 July, 17:30 for 18:00
Ike's Books, DURBAN 
48A Florida Road, Morningside
Sihle will be in conversation with simphiwe nyawose
RSVP to ikesbooks@iafrica.com

Thursday 24 July, 17:30 for 18:00
Amazwi Museum of South African Literature, MAKHANDA
25A Worcester Street
An evening of poetry and discussion with the author

Thursday 25 September, 17:30 for 18:00
The Forge, JOHANNESBURG 
87 De Korte Street, Braamfontein
Sihle will be in conversation with Thapelo Mokoatsi

Tuesday 18 November, 17:30 for 18:00
The Book Lounge, CAPE TOWN 
71 Roeland Street
Sihle will be in conversation with Wamuwi Mbao
RSVP to booklounge@gmail.com