COMMUNITY
While the festive season is a time of celebration and family reunions for many of us; for others, it emphasises their sense of loneliness and isolation.
As South Africans prepare for these holiday festivities, the AVBOB Poetry Project celebrates the work of Saaleha Idrees Bamjee, award-winning poet and photographer. Bamjee’s poems do not shy away from difficult subjects: in her debut collection, Zikr (uHlanga, 2018), which subsequently won the Ingrid Jonker Prize, she revisits her memories of her father’s funeral, when she was only six years old:
Always in the aftermath of sorrow,
guests are fed, blankets folded, furniture stacked,
prayer books piled up.
But here, as elsewhere, Bamjee’s focus turns to the ways in which belonging to a community can strengthen and support us during hard times. (For instance, her anthology is named after the Arabic word for the praises and prayers that are repeatedly recited as a part of Islamic worship.) Later, we encounter tributes to her grandmother, a “generous unshakable woman”, and to her mother, from whom she has inherited “a voice like her own deep resonance…”
She confirms that writing this collection has deepened her perception of her place in the world and her sense of belonging in it.
“I value community, and my place in it, now more than ever. There is so much of who we are as individuals tied up to how we show up in the world for others. And the rituals attached to certain communities can be enriching and provide that sense of purpose we flail without.”
Sometimes this exploration of community can be hilarious: in another of the collection’s finest poems, ‘Comings of Age’, she remembers a more recent family funeral as follows:
At my uncle’s funeral, I remember thinking
how odd must God think us, Muslims at a service for a Catholic man
at a Hindu crematorium.
As we read such poems, we find ourselves also being drawn into the poet’s community. In the process something is shared, and loads are lightened. Looking back to her father’s funeral again, she describes this profound exchange as follows:
I once told someone when I write
it’s not mine any more.
Over these years I have given
this day away to friends and strangers.
What is passed on is no longer held by the line.
Bamjee remains convinced of the power of writing to help us grow and heal.
“Sometimes when I’m uncertain about what it is I am feeling, the act of writing reveals it. And the more we write, the more we know. And self-knowledge is the pick that unknots those complicated mental tangles. There’s also something to be said for seeing your grief written out, almost as if it’s become something outside of yourself, that you’ve chosen to give a part of it away, because it may not serve you anymore. It’s certainly not a simple solution, as there are so many layers to grief. But certainly, writing is a good start.
“Reading helps too. When I come across a piece of writing that resonates, that feeling of being seen lightens the mental load.”
Bamjee is working towards a new anthology. The important thing, she says, is to keep writing through discomfort and uncertainty.
“I’m not discounting the importance of ‘thinking’ before the writing, but there has to be a point when one pushes through the fear of imperfection, when the writing actually happens.”
In the next few days, write a poem in which you remember what it felt like to be part of a community, either on the saddest or the happiest day of your life.
The 2027 AVBOB Poetry Competition opens for submissions on 1 August 2026. Visit the AVBOB Poetry website at www.avbobpoetry.co.za today and read some of the prize-winning poems from previous years as you prepare to find your own best words.