Mxolisi Nyezwa is nog een van die plaaslike digters wat op 9 en 10 Mei aan die Dansende Digtersfees by Spier Wynlandgoed gaan deelneem. Hy is in 1967 in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, gebore waar hy steeds woon. Hy werk as koördineerder van vaardigheidsprojekte vir werkloses en is ook redakteur (en stigter) van die kulturele blad Kotaz wat tans in sy 15de bestaansjaar is.
In 2009 sy werk met die Thomas Pringle National Award asook die South African Literary Award vir poësie bekroon.
Op Poetry International word sy digkuns soos volg beskryf: “Mxolisi Nyezwa shifts South African lyrical poetry into powerful and strange landscapes. These are associative poems which move rapidly through multiple dimensions. They encompass the spiritual, the political and bleakness of the everyday with the fluency of language and a compelling ‘deftness of image’.”
Hieronder volg een van sy gedigte wat op Poetry International se webblad te vinde is.
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THE POET’S FAILURE
we had words in us that we never said.
we could stand in these waterless alleys
and march into the wet rain.
we smelled like starved rogues, we stank
like dying corpses
sailing the warm winds of our silence,
searching in reckless shelters to cool our lips.
we struggled begging conciliation
down the trodden tracks of cold hurricanes
seeking out lost igloos,
we had words within these day-long blues –
driven by cold emotions into the shades and shadows
of a dying land, we had words that choked to be said –
and we never said them.
© Mxolisi Nyezwa