uHlanga is proud to announce the July 2025 release of Owele, the third full-length collection by Durban-born and -based poet Sihle Ntuli.
Owele is an ambitious collection that switches at ease between English and isiZulu, giving readers of either language a remarkable literary experience. Ntuli’s unique, jazz-inflected poetry here reaches a new level of innovation, vulnerability and delight. The book additionally features beautiful cover and inside photographs of the uMngeni Valley by Durban-based photographer Samora Chapman.
Owele’s inventive and award-winning poems meditate on the origins of Ntuli’s family, clan and language through the earthen-toned rivers of the Zulu world:
A family of rivers flows through the land. Their waters gather, merge and split. But even twins must create their own paths – where do their individual journeys begin, and how far must they travel to their shared destination, the vast and turbulent ocean?
The history of the land becomes the history of the person – but do rivers flow to a beat as blood does? The answers are not always as clear as the surface suggests.
Photograph © Centre for Stories
Sihle Ntuli was born in KwaMashu in 1990. He holds an MA in Classics from Rhodes University, Makhanda, and has lectured at the Universities of Johannesburg and the Free State. He has also held fellowships at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies and the Centre for Stories, Western Australia.
He is the author of two previous collections of poetry and two chapbooks, including Rumblin’, previously published by uHlanga. He is the winner of the 2024/2025 Diann Blakely Poetry Competition, a 2024 Best of the Net winner, and a former editor of New Contrast.
He lives in Durban.
Owele launches in July 2025. Please sign up to our email newsletter or our accounts on social media to keep up to date with launch events and more uHlanga news!