katlego kol-kes

The four movements of this collection of poems are part of a map of the journey Katlego K Kol-Kes has taken through her life as a writer and transgender identifying person in Southern Africa. These are the movements of someone who had never had the space, time, or language to share the innermost thoughts which would make them even more different. She sits now, almost three decades old, musing on: Faith, Politics, Family and Love.

Sexuality, race, class, gender, age, culture, and language are just a few of the issues which form the bases of the icebergs suspended as movements in this collection. She expounds how we spend a great deal of time trying to keep these icebergs from colliding in our daily lives, but we inevitably fail. In this case, the intersectionality of the movements is the moon and the waters are never at still.

With each movement, you soon realised that the sea of life – as romantic as it can be – requires deft manoeuvring of the many dangers which we are told were put in place to protect us from ourselves. This collection offers insight a personal and shared journey of African and contemporary global queerness. On the great commandment of Love, which appears in all faiths and is meant to be the cornerstone of every family unit, Kol-Kes recognizes that it is often used to silence people. These poems know no silence.

Poetry is a tricky thing to contain because it is simultaneously complete and missing pieces. It is both personal and impersonal. It can be by itself, yet sometimes it needs something else – experience perhaps – added in order for it to truly be.  In this debut collection, Kol-Kes ultimately travels between how to be and how it is to be different.