| Courtesy: Salomè Dubois Han |
Manthipe Moila is from
Johannesburg, South Africa, and holds a BA honours degree in English Literature. Her work has appeared in publications such as Tupelo Quarterly,
New Contrast, Stirring, A Long House, 20.35 Africa, Agbowó, and Saranac
Review. She was a Charles Simic Poetry Contest finalist (Hole in the
Head Review) and a Best of the Net Nominee (Hotazel Review).
Rootbound is her debut poetry
collection and was published by uHlanga in 2025. Manthipe is currently based in Seoul, South Korea.
Your poems are autobiographical in that they
draw on your own experiences, from your past in South Africa and your present,
adjusting to a new life in South Korea.
What are your thoughts about confessional poetry, and do you prefer such
personal poetry to more objective, impersonal work?
I love confessional poetry – it is the reason
why I am enamored with poetry at all. As for objective, impersonal poetry, I’m
not sure that I’ve come across much of it. Poetry is art and objective art
seems to me a bit paradoxical. As I’ve matured as a reader and writer, I’ve
found myself more and more drawn to poetry that plays with language. I think
the younger me would was not that attuned to the wonders of form, rhythm, and
had a harder time identifying a masterful poetic hand. However, these days,
regardless of the subject matter of the poem, I find the poems that take my
breath away are the ones that display innovation, evidence that the poet is
executing their art masterfully, poems that exist for the love of the medium.
Some of your poems deal with the trauma of your
father leaving your family, and they explore the impact of that trauma on your life. Do you see poetry as a
means of ‘healing’? I think that poetry, and art in general, can
play a role in the healing process but they are not the be-all and end-all of
the healing process. I’m no expert, but from what I have gathered healing is
complex. At the Open Book Festival this year, something like this question came
up and one of the audience members said something along the lines of ‘art is not therapy. Therapy is therapy.’ I
totally agree. Of course, there is art therapy, but putting together a poetry
collection, however personal it is, is very different from processing trauma
with a licensed professional. Especially because during the editing phase one
has to take a step away from the work and then make decisions that best serve
the poem, as opposed to decisions that best allow the person to process and
move on from their pain.
Do you see yourself as a poet, a woman poet, or
a black woman poet?
Well, I’m a woman and a black person, which
affects my experience of the world, which then has an influence on my art. I
believe that identity always has an influence on the work, regardless of how
the person making the art feels about categorisation and no matter how
‘neutral’ their identity is deemed to be.
When did you start writing the poems in Rootbound
– while still in South Africa or mainly while overseas?
I wrote the entirety of the collection while
living in South Korea. I had previously
completed a chapbook-length collection while in university, but I wasn’t
confident with what I had produced, so I put that away. I moved to Korea
straight out of university, in 2018, and by 2019 I had completed another
manuscript, which I actually submitted to uHlanga but did not meet the quality
standards. After that I took a long break from writing before properly picking
it up again, around 2023. From 2023 to 2024 I worked on the manuscript, and it
eventually became Rootbound. So, I was writing a bit while in South
Africa but since I’ve spent most of my 20s in Korea, that’s where the
manuscript was fully developed.
Apart from the obvious matter of themes, has
your shift from South Africa to South Korea affected your writing in any way?
Living in a foreign country has been quite an
experience, equal parts mundane and bizarre. It’s shifted the way I think about
the world. It’s also made magical realism or surrealism more appealing to me,
and I have a feeling that my next piece of writing will reflect that.
Your write in the Notes to Rootbound
that the collection was inspired by Maneo Mohale’s Everything is a Deathly
Flower – in what way was the collection inspired? What poets – South
African and otherwise – do you admire and feel inspired by?
Everything is a Deathly Flower was truly a life-changing book for
me. Though the subject matter differs greatly, I think that Rootbound
drew a lot from Mohale’s work, something essential that I find hard to put into
words. Perhaps it is that Mohale made me want to write and to join the uHlanga
family. In fact, I found Megan Ross’s
work had the same effect on me and I admire them both. I also love Safia Elhillo,
Sabrina Orah Mark, Sarah Lubala, Safiya Sinclair, Mark Strand, Ilya Kaminsky,
Franny Choi – the list goes on.
I am curious about the experiments with form in
some of your poetry – almost like concrete poetry or calligrammes. What
inspired this experimentation?
I think poetry is the language of leaping and I
love the notion of poetry as play. I have been and continued to be inspired by
many a poet who plays with form – Koleka Putuma, Terrance Hayes, and other
poets I have had the pleasure of encountering online. How to Be Drawn by
Terrance Hayes blew my mind and I wanted to try my hand at playing with form
similarly.
Roots are obviously important to you, and in
the interview at the book launch at Love Books you mentioned you have many plants
at home. But roots transform and grow, they spread, they journey – like lives,
thoughts, emotions, words. Could you expand a little on this roots metaphor?
I first learned about propagation in South
Korea after I took an interest in houseplants. I find it fascinating how plants
grown in such restrictive conditions can thrive – or at least, live long enough
to give their plant parent the impression that they have a green thumb. I also
love the fact that certain plants love being rootbound, but others will die if
not given more space. Roots are often associated with home, and I wanted to
complicate that notion by asking, what happens if one roots elsewhere? Is there
a kind of falsehood to that existence or wonder? The roots metaphor is
multi-layered though – it could point to identity, language, home, escape, belonging,
hope. It’s part of the reason why Rootbound has its title – I love this
multiplicity.
What are your feelings about poetry publishing
in South Africa at the moment? What do you see as the challenges and
opportunities?
I’m not sure, to be honest. I feel so far away
from home and despite being a South African poet, I don’t feel like my
experience is similar to that of poets living there. uHlanga is also an
incredible press, but it’s a small one, and so I can speak more comfortably
about small, indie publishing versus publishing at large. One of the main
challenges is resources – small presses have smaller budgets for things like
book promotion, especially in the age of BookTok, where it is often crucial to
get copies of books out to people who have reach in the social media book
space. As for opportunities, I think I would have to be on the ground to give a
more cogent answer for that.
