The Inevitable Evergreen Tree

Kgosietsile Monoto once expounded on a profound philosophy that, for writers and artists to truly impact social revolutions, their creative calling is not solely to speak and dream about revolution, but to embody its rigours and strife, its tensions and war. 

For this poet, it appears that poetry is a resistance and unwavering struggle towards the inevitable.

His anthology, aptly titled THE INEVITABLE EVERGREEN TREE, speaks of a metaphor rooted in nature, and as nature is neither a force of good or evil, but a continuous happening - it thus follows that such as the ever-growing tree, each word is but a leaf that flakes off a branch which nourishes birth in a cycle of being.

Poems of longing, disgrace a blend of the imaginative and the actual, gazed at through senses of a child with a bold animality and innocence wildly flaunted with apprehension amidst forces of good and evil.  

About his work he writes that “poems like I AM BLACK, NAMELESS challenge and question the status quo of people of colour, their condition and subsequently their role in shaping their reality…”.

He further states that:

In the bright shadows of figures that furnish unimaginative

Minds

We stand

As poets and poetry

As potteries that anchor roots of pot tree…

Therefore, it’s no surprise that his poems’ aesthetic sensitivities is rooted in those shadowy realms of a mind infested with an immense awareness of social injustices, black pain and the unending cycle of deferred dreams and disappointments.

I wonder if a poem such as A PLACE I COME FROM is but an apt homage to protest traditions steeped in words and soundscapes and physical drama of those exploring the “silver lining of horizons” unexplored.

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At times, feeling similar to verse spoken or sung as protest slogans in wars, Kgosietsile’s poetry bears resemblance to schools of Spoken Word artistry that is never divorced from the social and tangible, and at other readings the text feels like confessions of a breaking soul to whom sleep will never suffice.

It shows the connections between protest narratives of yesteryears mirrored in a contemporary language

And it must have been through some feat of desperate determination rom him, to tirelessly work at publishing his work within the cauldron of a fragmented and self-censoring South African poetry scene. 

Voices carry and deliver differing calamities and this difference is what imprints unique textures to one’s poetic temperament. And as often as is the case, his work is one such voice being born from gutters of lost “love revolutions”, desperate households and criminal exhibitionists.

And it is through independent publishing means that he ensured this anthology becomes testament that artists can work outside the strictures of publishing cartels and bring uncensored literary experiments to life.

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Kgosietsile Monoto has a captivating quality of mastering those subtle and deceptive township experiences, shedding light on a wide range of emotions, encouraging the reader to shift their experiences of these given realities to a distinctly lucid terrain. 

Images invoked are not oriented in the visual alone, but the often desiccated landscapes of the mind,  emphasising various complex characters that people both his memory and lived experiences.

This anthology doesn’t pretend to be a canonical work but somehow dabble in the poetic of politics as they are lived by many through their urbanist strife. 

A fascinating interplay of shadows and lights in life, with vigorous poetic strokes using an often demonised colonial language; this collection of poems therefore personifies multifaceted complexity of de-colonial methods of emancipating one’s imagination.

There is subtlety of expression, a lucidity of explaining the astounding with playful clarity that makes his art as a poet explorative and reflective, without falling into deprecating nostalgia.

And that makes such a modest book a marvel which should also be introduced to the young, encouraging them to read beyond words and endless feeds and memes of present-day information-age audiences and their constructed existence.

The publication itself stands as an unobjectionable proof that collective artistic practice, can produce creative output that will withstand ravages of time, even though books and clouds may disappear, their mere expressions will resonate into time unknown.

RreDot, as he is fondly known by his fellow wordsmiths, remains one of the most pivotal voices that have emerged from Khutsong and he has managed to BREAKDOWN our collective breakdown as a society on the verge of an inter-generational tyranny of complacency with future exploitation.  

This anthology is a form of memory retrieval through text, an unbounded verbal exploration of ghosts and lovers gone, of lands dissolving and houses crumbling, burying broken families.

A reminder of ills that pave a bitter tomorrow, and the sorrows sown for future generations by unimaginative masters and teachers, and a portal through which to envision new remedies.