Sarah Lubala
CITIZENS OF POETRY
On 17 October, World Trauma Day is celebrated across the world. While the World Health Organisation recognises trauma as one of the most pervasive causes of death and disability, it is important to remember how much of it remains invisible to us.
It is in this context that the AVBOB Poetry Project pays tribute to the astonishing work of Sarah Lubala, a Congolese-born South African poet whose debut collection, A History of Disappearance (Botsotso, 2022) won the 2024 Ingrid Jonker Award. In this outstanding collection, Lubala responds to her own and others’ displacement from the country of their birth in an attempt to “loosen death’s fist, / one finger at a time.”
Responding to her win, Lubala says, “Winning the award is deeply meaningful, and I’m honoured. But ultimately, it won’t alter my core relationship with the work. This collection emerged from very personal and complex places, and I remain committed to writing from a space of authenticity. Literary prizes are a wonderful way to celebrate work, but it’s important to remember that writing itself – the process, the exploration – is where the true value lies.”
Her poems evoke recent socio-political upheavals but often refer to older, even ancient, history.
“While many of the poems are rooted in my own experiences, I felt compelled to include the stories of others living on the margins. There is poetry in the lives of ordinary people, and bringing their stories alongside my own created, for me, a sense of communal belonging. This was especially important for me in the context of writing about displacement, trauma and migration. Weaving in and out of my stories and theirs, I felt the poems became a shared country, the words a form of citizenship for all of us who are displaced.”
Is it really possible for poetry to heal the wounds of trauma and displacement? Lubala clearly thinks so.
“For me, poetry has always been an education of the heart. When writing A History of Disappearance, I had healing in mind. Not just for the traumas I’ve experienced personally but also for the weight of generational trauma that I carry. Writing these poems allowed me to process and work through those histories. I’ve always found that poetry can bear the unbearable. It has certainly done that for me. The words, the poems, hold what can’t be said, what can’t be translated. Poetry holds the keen pain and mystery of being alive. It takes the thing that feels like it might kill you and moves it outside of you and makes it a thing in the world.”
In ‘Love, Again’, she movingly describes the bittersweet joy of new beginnings after heartbreak, asking:
“Thin love,
scrawny thing,
how do you do it?
The hand reaches out again,
you don’t bare your teeth.”
“‘Love, Again’ was written after I’d reconnected with an ex following a devastating breakup. It speaks to the terror of real love, which often feels too great to bear. But it also captures how that terror, that vulnerability, is what is so desperately needed to feel love in its expansiveness.”
In the same spirit, she later asks:
“In the astonishment of these after-years,
what is possible to ask from this life?”
The question is left open. But, clearly, it remains possible to be astonished, and poetry will always be a tool for recording newly discovered worlds of experience.
In the next few days, write a poem describing a place you have loved and lost.
The 2025 AVBOB Poetry Competition is open for submissions until 30 November 2024. Visit the website at www.avbobpoetry.co.za and find out how to enter.