The first Poetry Minute ‘Let Black Girls Be’ was a collaboration between Malawian storyteller, poet and researcher Upile Chisala, and self-taught illustrator, artist and designer Neo Phage.

Upile is known for her short and powerful poems on memory, black womanhood and self-love which can be found in her poetry collections 'Soft Magic', 'Nectar' and 'A Fire Like You'.

Neo explores parallel themes of identity, femininity, mental health, and social activism in her own practice. Her channels of expression range from traditional mediums to digital iterations.

This Poetry Minute collaboration is both tender and bold. Holding and acknowledging a world of diversity in a colourful moment of shared experience. It honours how the text itself wanted to collaborate.

Upile’s text brings to life what she describes as, “the experience of black girlhood. When you are taught silence and smallness from a very young age by a society that others you, it is easy to succumb to it. This poem is about disowning some of the untruths that systems of oppression continue to gift black girls and black women”.

Neo’s poignant and precise imagery carries the text. For Neo, “the aim for this project was to visually explore Upile's poem as a story. We follow the narrative of what it means to be a black girl navigating a society that is against you, and fighting to come out the other end true to yourself. I used a mixture of physical elements (pieces of text that were cut, pasted, and played with) as well as digital elements to create a hybrid visual diary. This felt true to the complexity of the text as well as the complexity of what it means to be a black girl”.

LET BLACK GIRLS BE
Written by| Upile Chisala
Illustration artwork and editing by | Neo Phage

A Poetry Minute is curated by Bongile Gorata Lecoge-Zulu