This Poetry Minute is an experimental collaboration by Napo Masheane and Daniel ‘Stompie’ Selibe. Napo is a poet, playwright, producer, director, cultural activist and performer; Stompie a visual artist, social activist and musician.

Oa Lelemela is our first multilingual offering fusing Napo’s mother tongue Sesotho with English. The text itself came together in sessions of play and experimentation between the artists. Here, the anthropomorphism of the element of water, together with sound evokes a vast metaphoric landscape.

In conversations with Napo and Stompie, the discovered multiplicity of meaning came to light:

‘The poem in the water symbolises that even when words, your voice, your art form, your being is suppressed, violated, muted, censored; it can always rise above force. Water takes a different shape depending on its landscape, container or movement. When Stompie blows his pipes into the water, the words are amplified and echoed, they swim and rise above the force of the water. The sound is distorted - eerily, hauntingly. Like an echo of the unknown, potentially making the listener uneasy. The most interesting thing for me was the sound of the wind pipes becoming the sound of the poem and the poet, as well as that listeners/readers can make out their own poem. The poem that I wrote is not necessarily the poem that is going to be read’ - Napo.

‘It feels profound, this improvised experimentation of finding methods, a figuring out of new ways of using words without having someone reciting poetry. Our collaboration began in the imagination, what we imagined felt clear in our heads but when we began to actually make it changed and became more interesting. I think this often applies to a process that doesn't have an ending, it is continuous work that allows other elements and ideas to unfold. What I found using different instruments blown into water is a new metaphor for sound. A new sound that can be interpreted to make a new meaning. In collaborating with Napo, we discovered a healing, the sound in the water created a kind of meditative reading’ - Stompie.

OA LELEMELA
Created by | Napo Masheane & Daniel “Stompie” Selibe
Cinematography and Editing by | Noah Cohen
Sound recording by | Zain Vally

A Poetry Minute is curated by Bongile Gorata Lecoge-Zulu