A RAMSHACKLE HOME MADE OF WORDS
Most people would agree that the creative spirit needs hope for the future and a place of refuge and safety in flourish.
But as we prepare to celebrate Women’s Day on 9 August, we are aware that gender-based violence makes the world profoundly unsafe for millions of South African women.
Manthipe Moila is a young poet and teacher born in South Africa, but currently living in Seoul, South Korea, who just launched a stunning debut collection, Rootbound (uHlanga, 2025). In it, she tells the story of how poetry became a place of refuge, healing and hope for her.
While Moila feels ill-equipped to offer general comments on the significance of Women’s Day, her poems eloquently describe what it means for a young woman to make a home in an uncertain world. In the collection’s opening poem, ‘Dedication I’, she references the high levels of gender-based domestic violence in South Africa. It asks why, in this world, “blackness in girl-form is a round, rotating emptiness…” She comments, “I wrote that poem as a dedication to my younger self. It is, in part, a poem about internalising toxic ideologies and the consequent feelings of erasure and insignificance.”
By the end of the collection, however, Moila has managed to conjure what she calls “a ramshackle home / out of all the words I know.” At times, she achieves this by describing the jungle of houseplants that surrounds her, each of them as much in search of new soil as she is. At other times, she imagines conversations with the many strong women in her life. In one poem, ‘Monstera Deliciosa’, she and one of her aunts, herself a talented gardener, discuss pot plants. The conversation seems to be going well, but Moila notes:
“…you desire to speak only about nodes
the unfurling of the leaves aerial roots
and she might ask if you ever think of starting a family
and you about propagating in water…”
Moila explains, “Conversations about family are invariably conversations about intimacy. But the truth is we can miss each other despite proximity or blood, despite our desire to reach each other. I wanted to know what that would look like in a poem. Also, I have three Monstera plants in my apartment, so that poem was begging to be born.”
Rootbound ends with another dedication poem, in which she expresses the desire to present her mother with a world containing “enough green to sustain us all, / enough white to stun, / and a pattern that makes everyone marvel / at the mystery of how / things turned out this good.”
It is an image that evokes longing for a better, kinder world but also the possibility for profound individual and societal change.
“The collection focuses quite heavily on absence and loss, but through shaping it I gained perspective on what I was so lucky to have growing up. My mother is a powerful woman, my hero, and I wanted there to be room to celebrate her. That poem was inspired by a picture of the two of us dancing, and it’s a poem about hope. That’s what I ultimately wanted to close the collection with: hope. What else do we have?”
In the next few days, write a poem in which you describe yourself finding a place of refuge at a difficult time. Choose words that show how it helped to shape the person you are today.
The AVBOB Poetry Competition reopens its doors for submissions on 1 August 2025. Visit www.avbobpoetry.co.za and familiarise yourself with the competition rules.