It is raining in Port Elizabeth as I write this. The room is cold and has a pond life of its own. If I am not reading in this room, I am writing in it. This stellar poetry collection is written in a coalesced brittle fashion, a sound metaphysical abundance spilling out of it with a kind of spiritual existence. It is church, it is mall rat, it is tribe, it is dahliahs in my hands, it is a tribute to community, our heritage, our elders authority, our magnanimous ancestors, all nourishing, caretaking memory of doing up buttons and learning to tie our shoelaces in transient childhood. It is soul food. It is a carnation in a buttonhole. She photographs the incomplete veil of life and the cultural shroud of death so well in this collection. She brings to life the circle of grace and paints mercy with a Christ like-knowledge at the altar of this collection. It is her country and ‘the view of the river from her room’. It is her Jerusalem.
She asks of us to not just understand the complex nuances of the female response to her nuclear environment, to her career, her family, but to wear our silence like armour. Her collection is a statement about the system. A documented commentary
about the abandoned masses of the undermined and exploited working class, detribalised, and the unknown black feminist. It marks the boundaries and territories of class, the gambling discleship of womanhood, with a kind of revisited approach, and spirited interpretation. Blooming Cactus spoke to me like manna on opinionated topics, the burning bush on informative themes, as an oracle on relevant issues with insight and wisdom, compulsion and action, judgement and certainty, morality and the spitfire preachy-lecturing style of contemporary religion. Mbambo is a witness to God.
The smell of darkness is swamp life here, earth is a wasteland, the landscape pathological and away from meaning, always moving towards a pedagogical mindshift, and androgynous reckoning and reconciliatory awakening of the mother-figure as both poet and guardian. That the society we inhabit is grossly materialistic and illusion, conceptual and spoiled, and here in these pages her every speech has a stem. Rare is the language like the experience of the first rain on earth, possessive is the mother tongue, a visual feasting of history in the making trying to justify our terrifying and groundbreaking relationship to climate, social media, gender-based violences, the awareness of the limitless and powerful mother-figure, and mental health.
This poet speaks with a background rhythm that translates itself extraordinarily. She articulates altruistic feminism with wisdom, and expresses herself with insight. The writing is sensual and phenomenal, a collaboration between indigenous knowledge and the digital divide. She astonishes from beginning to end as a river in a forest. She is winter branches. She is a sign of the voices to come not only out of South Africa, but the continent itself. I contemplated for a long while after reading the manuscript of our starvation as female poets hungering after global recognition. That time is upon us like a prayer in my bones.
Mikateko E. Mbambo speaks volumes of the times that we are living in. Our advancement, the feminist movement in Africa. She talks about the political intellect of women and how it relates to the intent, the psyche of the feminist-poet, the land of the brave and dazzling female intellectual, and the freedom and loneliness in writing. I have this to say to her. You are perfect for your assignment. Pain is certain. A kind of grassroots silence is certain when it comes to the voice of South African female poets. Pain of the mind, the psychology of the mind can be transformative as well as an education. Your song is hope and sanctuary. Your refuge speaks to me, makes mention of the fact, it whispers of a future to me. To forget words like ‘child abuse’, ‘lack of mother love, kindness and warmth’, and ‘trauma’. I dream about your future projects and goals being filled with holisticism and vision. Reading you is like envisioning Sappho. Your vision will become the vision of millions.
World, contemplate this gifted daughter well on her way. This book will become a classic. Thus, her voyage to eternity.
