AG: Please introduce yourself.
ES: My name is Eugene Skeef. I am a South African living in London since I went into exile from my country in 1980 as a result of my work in the Steve Biko-led Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). I was born in Durban. I grew up in a part of Clermont Township called Indunduma. I am a poet, musician, educator, broadcaster, conflict resolution consultant, and community workshop leader. I also mentor young people to become more fulfilling versions of themselves.
I was recently appointed Professor of Practice at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT) in the Faculty of Education at the University of Johannesburg (UJ).
AG: What do you do for a living?
ES: I make my living through my art. In addition to giving bespoke workshops and masterclasses on poetry, music, leadership, and conflict resolution, I often get commissions to write a piece of music for an orchestra or a film. I have also been commissioned to write poetry. My most gratifying poetry commission was by Her Excellency Tembi Tambo, High Commissioner of South Africa to the United Kingdom. The commission was in commemoration of the tragic loss of life of the South African conscripts who drowned with the sinking of the SS Mendi on 21 February 1917 off the coast of the Isle of Wight.
Here is the poem I wrote in memory of these troops, which I recited with my group the Abantu Ensemble at this auspicious event.
tell us your truth
(in memory of the south african troops
who lost their lives with ss mendi)
I
beatitude
we ponder the beatitude
of the befallen
on the preludial morning
of unscripted sanctities
for voices will forever quiver
in the exquisite temple
of silent torsos
II
prophecy
veiled in the mists of time
fragments of iniquity
precipitate always with portent
in skies darkened
by abject intent hidden
beneath star-bound wings
of subterranean agendas
III
cataclysm
a severed calabash
may be divested
of its seeds and pith
but it will remain buoyant
and float on the tides of memory
to return to the shores
where the transgression
of the divine originated
IV
advent
the trust of strangers
was placed on the shoulders
of your courage
like fruits to hang
on the branches of trees
from an unfamiliar orchard
what wind was it
that navigated the cavities
of your silence
to bestow it with song
in the wake of seasons
of unspeakable sorrows
who leaves richly filled granaries
of their own heritage unattended
to swarm like wayward termites
in the currents of a lovelorn landscape
but even as the respiratory tide
called out your risen names
you each already knew
that your expiry date was inscribed
on the label of your soul
by the master weaver
whose invisible fingers
deftly spun the thread
of your singular truth
and at the descent of the hull
rose the shrill cry of the gull
an unbecoming clarion
cutting through the mist
of aggregated uncertainty
as a cloven heaven
poured out its incumbent light
to infuse all your hearts
with the eternal bliss
of your salvaged hope
and the thermals
of your fated flight of migration
returned you
to the bated breath of a nation
waiting to know your truth
V
compassion
we want to hear your story
tell us your story
your story
is our story
AG: What do you think are the challenges facing a poet in the micro-climate that we are living in in Africa/South Africa today and talk to us about some of the more vital aspects of your writing poetry?
ES: The poet crystallises the tears of a nation in the sun of truth before extracting the gems with which they will bejewel the garland that every person will drape across their chest in the dance celebrating their heritage.
The poet rises at the dawn of dispassionate days of the people’s symphonic silence and freely dispenses tears for them to express their fears, bitterness, anger, despair, pain, anguish, seemingly interminable sorrow, and even the burning passion of love. In this way the poet gives voice to the hidden song of the nation that is the real anthem of their becoming, the symphony that enables them to sing sincerely about who they are truly meant to be in this world.
The poet in South Africa and the rest of the African continent must rise to the responsibility of being both the barometer and inspiration of society. The poet must be fearless in speaking truth to power along the path to eradicating the injustices that are rife in our countries. Poets should multiply the creation of local poetry circles within their communities and use these as centres of alternative cultural education and knowledge dissemination – as an extension and evolution of the radical process we began in the 1970s through the BCM.
AG: What genres do you write in?
ES: I write in every style imaginable, including prose poetry, rhyming, freeform, informal haiku, chant style, and cryptic formats.
AG: What makes you happy or sad about being a poet and do you feel people look up to you in some ways? Why do you think they look up to you?
ES: I believe I am immune to sadness in the milieu of poetry. I am perpetually happy writing poetry, which I have been writing almost daily since I was five years old. I could say that poetry has been my sustenance alongside food, water, and love. It is the bell in the temple of my joy.
I feel deeply honoured by the complimentary remarks that I receive in response to my poetry from people of all ages and from different cultural backgrounds. I am particularly humbled by the number of young people who regard me as a mentor or as someone they would like to emulate in their own lives.
I do not take this praise for granted. My response to it is the other extreme from vanity. I openly express my gratitude in gestures of humility and dignity.
AG:What is a live reading like?
ES: I always meditate and do deep breathing cycles before a live reading as a preparation for being as open as I can be in front of people I may be meeting for the first time. I do this primarily to be in harmony with the space and the audience so that we are all as one. This way I can flow and be ready for any shift in the energy of the environment, because every molecule in the room is a particle of energy in a vibrational dance of communion. A significant part of my reading is improvisation, even if I am reading the words directly from the page or the screen of my laptop or smartphone.
AG: What do you think of book prizes and competition amongst writers? Can there ever be such a thing as a “best book”?
ES: This is a very good question for me! I am not at all a fan of book prizes and competitions. I don’t subscribe to the notion of competition in all its manifestations as a divisive capitalist device. I have a playful concept of c-words. As a rule, I embrace the c-word collaboration and reject competition. I find the idea of a “best book” ludicrous. The process, production, and reception of any creative form of expression is highly subjective.
AG: Who and what inspires you creatively as a poet? What made you want to be a poet, and do you keep a journal? Is there anything else you would like to share?
ES: Poetry comes to me from every perceivable angle of my conscious and subconscious. I have poems coming to me in dreams literally every night. I often have to get up in the middle of the night to quickly jot a poem down in my notebook by the bedside or type it into the note app on my iPhone. My mother brings me poems in dreams. The smile of someone on the bus, the glance of a pedestrian, the falling of a leaf in the park, the bicycle tread marks on a footpath, the shape of a cloud, the imprint of dead leaf patterns on a paving slab, the song of a bird… anything can and does inspire me.
I started reading when I was two years old. I loved the power of language as a means of creative expression. By the age of five I was writing poetry, and I have never stopped.
I consider myself very fortunate that I did not have to travel anywhere to witness the power of creative language. It was there in my own home to imbibe like the plentiful water that came down as a blessing from the thunderous dome (My township was called Indunduma, and I took this ideophonic name to be inspired by the dramatic thunder that announced the seasonal torrential downpours).
I was surrounded by poetry as a child. The tongues of my people are steeped in the art of using immersed language to talk about even the most mundane everyday matters. We do not consider this to be contrived or a tastelessly decorative device. To the contrary, this art is a natural part of our appreciation and expression of life’s infinite gifts, especially as endowed by the abundance of the yielding environment.
So, as I grew into the fullness of my being I observed and learned from those who honoured me with the poetry of their presence. I witnessed how as a people we felt beautifully challenged by the diversity and luxuriance of the natural environment to express it through our creative abilities, one of these being the attractive and evocative music of language.
I learned quite early how to win the attention of girls in the traditional fashion of weaving poetry into the lacing of my casual conversation. I remember using this technique to great success while attending a primary school run by German nuns who despised and discouraged any creative freedom of expression from the eager pupils in their charge. My fellow pupils, noticing that my poetry gained me a disproportionate amount of interest from the girls, would come to me and request that I pen them an ode to someone whose eye they wanted to catch. This developed into a small enterprise whereby I would charge a fee of three pence per poem (using the imperial British currency of the time, which was also called a tickey, or utiki in Zulu). The boy would present the poem – signed by me in his name – to his beloved, who would swoon at the effusive stanzas; but the ensuing affection would be short-lived, as the girl would quickly discover that the boy’s professed mastery of the art of amorous oratory did not match the heights of the written poetry. The suitor would be summarily dumped, and the unwitting originator of the scripted lyricism purposefully sought.
This is how I used to end up with the girl and the money. My only regret is that I did not continue this lucrative practice into adulthood.
AG: What are your hobbies, favourite music and books?
ES: I enjoy cooking for my family and do not regard this as a chore, but a leisurely activity. I also enjoy watching movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime. I do this to wind down at the end of a busy day.
My daily soul food is the music of my closest friend, the late great South African genius Bheki Mseleku. I have all his albums, but I also have his unreleased solo piano tracks (some including voice and saxophone). I listen to these every day on my meditative power walks. The experience is transcendental.
I also enjoy listening to John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Kamasi Washington, Eddie Parker, Anthony Tidd, Marcina Arnold, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Keith Jarrett, Nduduzo Makhathini, Linda Sikhakhane, Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, Sona Jobarteh, Elena Pinderhughes, Samora Pinderhughes, Kit Downes…
These days, because I spend a lot of time composing and writing my memoir, I tend to read shorter literary offerings. I browse online through platforms such as Pocket, the free service from Mozilla, where I can find articles of interest.
AG: What films inspire you?
ES: I am generally inspired by films with a deep sense of humanity at their core. A good example is the film Labor Day with Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin and Gattlin Griffith as the principal characters, which I find myself coming back to from time to time. Another example would be Denzel Washington’s Equalizer franchise directed by the brilliant Antoine Fuqua, even though these films use the hardcore action thriller idiom to explore themes of justice, morality, and human compassion. However, I also enjoy watching action movies for pure entertainment, especially when I need relief from serious thinking, which is my more default state of being as an artist from a background of political activism. Samuel L. Jackson’s The Negotiator tops this list.
But the type of films that truly inspire me are rooted in my love of independent African cinema. The two films that stand out for me are Yeelen by the Malian director Souleymane Cissé and Ceddo by Ousmane Sembène from Senegal. These are seminal films in the African cinematic canon that I regard as being as important for my cultural stimulation as the progressive African literature across the continent represented by authors and poets such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Ben Okri from Nigeria, Miriam Tlali from South Africa, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o from Kenya, and Ama Ata Aidoo from Ghana.
AG: What motivated you to write during the pandemic?
ES: During the Covid- 19 pandemic, I felt called upon as a poet with a long history of being an artist whose work has always served simultaneously as a barometer of society and an inspiration for people’s aspirations towards a more harmonious world. I felt the urge to delve more deeply into the immersive qualities of my nature both as a person and a poet, and from there to communicate with the world at large through the humanising poetry of love, peace, empathy, compassion, self-belief, and wholeness of being.
When the government instituted a series of social distancing and lockdown regulations, I entered a phase of conscious poetic meditation. I started writing daily coronavirus-themed poems that would last the entire period of lockdown. I shared these on my social media networks.
My goal was to turn this daily meditation into a published collection of poems that I hoped would inspire readers to cope with the ill effects of isolation and inspire them to tap into their own creativity as a means of attaining sustained wellbeing and safety during times of personal crisis.
I was involved in several projects that came out of the Covid- 19 restrictions. One of these was a song I wrote inspired by the murder of George Floyd by that racist police officer Derek Chauvin who pressed his knee against his throat, causing him to stop breathing. The song is called ‘Anthem For A New World’, and it was to be recorded remotely by musicians from different parts of the world. It included choir, brass, strings, percussion and movement. The multi-screen editing was to be done at the Purcell School of Music in England, where I used to be musician-in-residence some years ago.
The main project that was closest to my heart from the beginning of the pandemic, as I said, was the one that involved writing a poem-a-day inspired by the effects of lockdown. I posted these daily poems on all my social media platforms, and it was very reinforcing to see how much people from all over the world shared them further. Some of these poems even ended up on a public wall on a street in a community in Cardiff, Wales. My friend Sianed Jones, a brilliant violinist, singer, and activist, painted a few of my poems on this wall to inspire members of the community who were distressed by the negative effects of lockdown.
One day I returned from my morning meditative walk to find a message from Sianed. She was notifying me that she had painted my words on a wall in her neighbourhood in Splott.
I was humbled to be quoted alongside Rumi. This is what she has to say about my thought: “Thank you Eugene for your thought for the day posted on Facebook. I hope you are tickled that it has landed up on a wall in Splott.”
Here are the links (including my poem ‘in a limbo of a bleached history’ in memory of George Floyd):
https://thepearlsofpearlstreet.blog/…
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10156760044626131&set=a.58985416130
Another time Sianed sent me this message: “Dear Eugene I have just received your beautiful book in the post. I can’t wait to read it. Here it is in front of a couple of your poems that found themselves on my wall once more to inspire people in these difficult times this new year. Sending you all my love Sianed”
https://thepearlsofpearlstreet.blog/…/the-pearls-of…
“a cherished self”
So honoured to have my poem painted on Pearl Street in Splott, Cardiff ), Wales by my creative musician sister Sianed Jones.
This is what she wrote on her blog: “My dear friend and beautiful inspirational musician, teacher and many other things Eugene Skeef has been writing poems in response to the place we find ourselves today. This is a poem he wrote just a few days ago. After my wall of instruction I wanted a wall of love to balance the fear with hope and sustenance. I am sure many more of Eugene’s poems will find their way to the wall. Enjoy! Thank you Eugene from the bottom of my heart. Sianed”— in Splott, Cardiff, United Kingdom.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10157928370121131&set=a.470433756130
Yet another pandemic project is a collaboration with a fellow South African pianist/singer called Estelle Kokot. She has been composing music for a selection of my daily poems since the beginning of the pandemic but has continued beyond this period. We have titled this project Thokoza. Having launched it through a creative workshop as part of the London Jazz Festival at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2022, we plan to take this sort of work to South African communities, academic institutions, and arts centres. Recording and releasing the collaborative songs is in the pipeline.
Writing poems as daily meditations on coping with the distressing effects of the pandemic, since the advent of lockdown in March 2020 in the UK, served also as a way of healing myself and others.
My younger brother Neville, who lives in South Africa, where I grew up, discovered, during his recuperation from a brief illness, that reading my poems in bed had a healing effect on him. My poems inspired him to reflect on the purpose of his life and gave him new insights into how he could infuse it with more meaning.
Having taken to following me online, Neville made it a point to share each of my daily poems on his Facebook timeline as a morning greeting to his followers – often in two or three languages. This has led to his many followers, made up largely of his colleagues from his days as a trade union representative and political activist during Apartheid, taking a keen interest in the art of poetry.
On the morning of Saturday 23 October 2021, I posted an image of that day’s handwritten poem on all my social media platforms. The poem, titled ‘poetry’, is short and explores the essence of the creative form’s transformative powers. Inspired by the poem, my brother sent me the following WhatsApp message:
“Wow!
This morning I met my old drinking friends, and they were saying that they follow your poetry that I post daily but they don’t understand it including art. I then said to them they must close their eyes and imagine that they’re at home at Inanda Dam in the morning when the birds start chirping and the roosters crow and the cows start to moooo, and then I read them one of your poems, POLLINATION OF LOVE. Their response was just amazing. They actually wanted me to read them another poem ”
Then, two minutes later, Neville sent me a voice note in which he tells a story about a young woman from the valley of our childhood. She was distressed about the loss of her partner, who she was due to bury. In a gesture of offering the woman solace, my brother sent her my poem, ‘when we cry’, which I wrote in 2018. She phoned him to thank him. She said, “Hey, Skeef, waze wangisiza!” (“you helped me so much!”) He went on to say that she referred to him as “Leadership”, a popular nickname he earned during his days as a trade union activist. “Wang’siza, Leadership. Ungikhiphile nje kulento ebengik’yona. Uyazi, ngiziwa nje ngiphelele. NoBaba lo ngizom’ngcwaba ngikhululekile; ngob’ukukhala akuyona into ekufanele ngabe sinamahloni ngayo.” (“You helped me, Leadership. You’ve just taken me out of this state I was in. You know, I just feel complete, perfect. I will now be able to bury my partner in peace; because crying is not something that we should be ashamed of.”)
Who are the poets and writers that influence your writing, that inspire you?
There are several poets who have inspired me over the decades, and not all of them are South African. I started writing poetry at age five. My earliest inspirations included Yeats, Byron, Tennyson and Shakespeare; but as I grew up, but still very much in my youth, I realised that the proverbs, aphorisms, singing, courting rhymes and rhythms in our indigenous languages constituted the most inspiring poetry I was to experience as the basis of my own writing. I learned that the technical and flowing nuances of our languages echoed the reverberative sounds and spirits of nature and the deeply embedded memories of our ancestral lineages.
Later, I experienced the writing of my comrades such as James Matthews, Don Mattera, and Mandla Langa who were part of the Steve Biko-led Black Consciousness Movement that I was actively involved in as well. We shared a common motivation to use our poetry as a source of inspiration for our people to believe in themselves and to use their innate creative abilities to determine their future as part of a people seeking freedom from the evils of the racist apartheid regime.
Then, of course, I encountered authors and poets from beyond our borders like James Baldwin, Pablo Neruda, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, Wole Soyinka, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. But my most favourite writer is the Colombian literary giant Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His allegorically evocative narrative style comes from the African echoes of his ancestry with resonances of spirituality that resemble my own style of expression.
On 20 & 21 March 2021, I was hugely honoured to be invited by my creative cultural compadre Dr Lebogang Lance Nawa to participate in the National Writers’ Association of South Africa (NWASA) online inaugural general assembly. A day or so before the conference, Lance surprised me with a call on Messenger. Beside him was sitting the legendary South African poet and anti-apartheid community activist Don Mattera (aka Bra Zinga). Mattera was proudly holding a copy of ‘in search of my river’, my recently published poetry book.
I was overcome by a boyish excitement at seeing one of my cultural heroes celebrating my poetic accomplishment. As if this gesture of love, recognition and respect was not enough, the bard of our struggle for freedom went a step further. Lance forwarded me the following text message that Mattera sent to Ssali Publishing House in praise of my book.
“Glory to the publishers of writer Eugene Skeef’s “in search of my river – a symphonic poem of memory” Wow! Glory, after reading this book. It became a deep, moving and creative tale within my mind, heart and soul. Verily, reading it over and over, I searched for a river inside my own memory. Like I said – Eugene’s search became a part of my own searching for the spiritual river in me and it invigorated me to want to live beyond my pain and my illness. I repeat that young Skeef’s search will also touch his readers – to seek their own rivers for symphonic poems of their own memories – just like I did! Perhaps other readers will also be deeply touched, like I am now. To also search for their own symphonic memories. *like I did and found my spiritual river. Verily, like I repeat – Eugene Skeef’s book may also find many other readers deep inside their warm places like it did for me. Glory! (Dr. Donato Francesco Mattera – the bard of freedom and of compassion. Glory)”
I am grateful beyond measure for this blessing! Camagu! Kwande!
What motivates you?
I am motivated by love as the principal act of compassion. Nothing fulfils me more than the experience of witnessing someone absorb the essence of my actions as a living gesture of empowerment. This is happening currently in relation to a close friend who is a superlatively gifted musician. He was recently admitted to a psychiatric hospital in South Africa and reached out to me for support and guidance to realign himself and rediscover his balance. He is a genius the brilliance of whose light is in need of recalibrating. We were both profoundly moved by the extent to which my guided suggestions based on the affirmative cultivation of his own inherent self-healing capacity has been producing positive results.
So, my chief motivation is to continue to use my art in the service of love in its profoundest form as an act of courage to not let the fear of being alive kill us before we have even begun to live.
Can you give us a quote by your favourite writer?
“The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
What writer/book/film changed your life?
One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
