DEFINITION
Many people believe that there is nothing less poetic than a list. After all, we mostly draw up lists in an attempt to make the world feel more familiar and manageable.
However, lists can be fascinating and even unsettling. Sometimes, by making lists of the everyday objects that surround them, poets reveal the world as mysterious and profoundly strange.
Nondwe Mpuma is a poet and lecturer at the University of the Western Cape and has worked tirelessly to maintain poetry spaces in Cape Town. Her debut collection, Peach Country (uHlanga, 2022) has been praised for its “open-eyed wonder at the entirety of existence”. She recently shared a beautiful, understated list poem from this anthology, which demonstrates how effective the genre can be in capable hands. Notice that the poem’s title promises the safety of things that mean precisely what they are supposed to mean. Instead, the definitions it offers subvert and play with our expectations.
Read the poem Mpuma has shared and let it inspire you to see the ordinary things that surround you with new eyes.
Definition
The paved road,
a path to a Wendy house accustomed to the beating of a pipe.
A chair,
a stump of an old tree in a kitchen.
A Jewel,
a stove that will outlive us all.
The beach,
a holiday I could never reach.
Sand,
carried with beach-dog oil to keep the ancestors at bay.
A gravel road,
the intimacy of a plank in the back of a van.
Smoke,
my grandfather’s red Peter Stuyvesant.
Refinery,
I could smoke you like you smoke me and together we would incinerate the world.
The first thing that strikes us is how profoundly personal these definitions are. For instance, we do not know why the Wendy house should be accustomed to the beating of a pipe. We do not even know what kind of pipe is being referred to. What matters is that the Wendy house has a life of its own, to which it has become accustomed.
In the case of the chair and the Jewel, we are invited to experience a very specific space. We are asked to remember not only why chairs are useful but also the trees from which they are made.
The beach, on the other hand, is evoked in terms of absence. We learn that this particular beach was inaccessible at some stage. No reasons are given. What matters is that this beach is and always will be different from all others.
By the time we reach the sand, we have learned that the speaker in this poem has a relationship with ancestors who have to be mollified in quite specific ways. The definitions of the gravel road and of smoke continue the trend towards specificity. Then, finally, the refinery is addressed as if it is an independent person. It is so familiar that it can be challenged to a smoking competition, with potentially fatal consequences for us all.
The delightful thing about this poem is its playfulness. There is no deeper meaning to chase after, even though there is clearly much information the reader does not have. Mpuma has taken these everyday objects and rendered them strange and new. It is as if we are experiencing roads, chairs, beaches and smoke again for the first time. It is a deeply satisfying, encouraging feeling, and it teaches us how poetry can revive our curiosity about the world and ourselves.
In the next few days, write your own list of definitions. Choose objects that are familiar to you and see if you can make them strange and new.
The annual AVBOB Poetry Competition opens for submissions on 1 August 2025. Visit www.avbobpoetry.co.za today and familiarise yourself with the competition rules.