Musawenkosi Khanyile
Musawenkosi Khanyile was born in 1991 and raised in Nseleni. He holds a Masters in Clinical Psychology from the University of Zululand, a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of the Western Cape, and a Masters in Public Health at the University of Cape Town. His first published poems appeared in an uHlanga magazine released in 2014. He is the author of a chapbook, The Internal Saboteur, published by Akashic Books in the U.S.A., and of All the Places, his debut collection of poetry, published by uHlanga, which won the 2020 South African Literary Award for Poetry and the 2021 NIHSS Award for Best Poetry.
All the Places was also a finalist for the 2020 Ingrid Jonker Prize. He currently lives in Cape Town.
In his moving debut collection, Musawenkosi Khanyile speaks for the heartache, perseverance and untriumphant triumph of township life. Through snapshots and memories of family and community, centred around the boy- and young manhood of a single narrator, All The Places is a rare and compelling poetic Bildungsroman, with the ambition and scope of a novel, paired with (and pared down to) minimalist and clear-eyed verse.
Concurrently original and quintessentially South African, these poems mark Khanyile out as a skilled stylist and storyteller – a frank and important new voice in South African literature.
https://musakhanyile.co.za/about/
https://uhlangapress.co.za/musawenkosi-khanyile-all-the-places
Selected Work
NQUTHU
On my way to Nquthu where love is calling me,
the taxi hums its way up the hills of Ndundulu,
passing markets where women make a living selling fruit.
!eir breasts dance up and down whenever a car stops:
the share of pro”t relies on whoever arrives first.
Before we leave Mpangeni, a woman stops to sell us ice cream.
The hurt in her eyes speaks of the many lives like hers
that are carried through days by little earnings.
At the end of each prayer reality awaits
where daily bread is not given, but sweated for.
We drive past a girl grappling with a water pump
and cows eating grass behind mud houses.
I know houses like these that are eaten away by heavy rains and have fingerprints on their walls
by the hands that built them.
My leg is sore by the time we reach Nquthu,
a town with only one set of traffic lights.
A boy holding a live chicken by its legs crosses the road.
I’m now thinking of all the lengths I will go to
for love.
NESELENI
What a coincidence that my township is divided into wards,
that our homes stand one beside the other like hospital beds,
that so many of us die here,
that the goal is to make it out alive.
Bibliography
2019 All the Places his debut collection of poetry, published by uHlanga
2019 The Internal Saboteur (chapbook), published by Akashic Books