What do you do with a void the size of an absent father? In her debut collection of poems, Rootbound, Manthipe Moila confronts abandonment in a potently truthful way. Rootbound is published by uHlanga Press. The poet is from Johannesburg but is now based in Seoul, South Korea. She holds a BA Honours in English Literature from Rhodes University. Mahlatse Mokgope chatted with the poet about the release of her collection
Mahlatse: Lucille Clifton said that “poetry is a way of trying to express something that is very difficult to express, and it’s a way of trying to come to peace with the world”. The speaker in this collection grapples with something that is very difficult: abandonment. Before we get into the nitty gritty of this subject matter, in a sentence, what is poetry to Manthipe?
Manthipe: Poetry to me is freedom on the page. Which might be a strange thing to say given the traditional constraints placed on what people know of conventional poetry. But I feel like I can leap with poetry in a way I would not get away with in any other genre. That to me is freedom.
Mahlatse: You hint at the expectation of silence and avoidance of addressing painful things in families. In the poem Home safe, the speaker says:
“So many saids are unthinged when one grows up anti-
conversation and pro-elephants in the room.”
The existence of this collection itself is a subversion of the culture of silence that permeates society. Why was it important to unearth your memories to bring these poems to life?
Manthipe: I think that silence begets silence, and the only way to escape it is to speak. In order for me to speak, I had to excavate. What were the things that, if viewed in the light of day, were particularly strange to be silent about? I tried to write other collections before Rootbound and they did not ring true but that’s because I wasn’t willing to do the work, to dig through memory and shape into language that sings.
Mahlatse: The collection is centred around abandonment and the overwhelming presence of a father’s absence. What inspired you to write poems about this?
Manthipe: I feared to speak on this subject honestly because I come from a very spiritual and religious family, and one doesn’t speak plainly about one’s ancestors, parents etc. unless they want to face a lot of criticism and potentially some wrath (spiritual and otherwise). Those were, are the stakes. However, I am in love with the written word, and I could not move on, write anything else, until I wrote honestly about being abandoned by my father.
Mahlatse: Daddy issues. We have all heard the term hurled as a cheap shot, specifically at girls and women who do not grow up with present fathers. A shaming of daughters left behind by men who decided they were not up for the task. You explore the ache of this experience of growing up with an absent father – the confusion and longing that surrounds the ordeal.
Manthipe: I hate that phrase. It’s loaded with fault in a way that feels deeply inappropriate. It’s especially harmful as children who experience abandonment by a parent, or parents, tend to internalise that trauma. I understand that parenthood, fatherhood, black fatherhood – all of these are complex and layered issues.
Mahlatse: You played around with form and structure a lot throughout this collection. Was it intentional or a fortunate casualty of a young poet experimenting?
Manthipe: I think it was my desire to do just that – play. Though the subject matter is heavy, I wanted to express myself as expansively as possible which led me to play with form.
Mahlatse: You draw heavily on the botanical environment. What is your fascination with botany and why did you choose to make it a central motif of your debut collection?
Manthipe: My fascination with botany stems from my status as a plant parent. I find it so interesting that indoor plants are a hassle, finicky, impossible, and yet they bring so much comfort, so much beauty to those who appreciate them. I’m surrounded by plants and I’m still in that stage of my writing career where I am drawing heavily from my environment.
Mahlatse: How did you arrive at the image and language that best suits your intention with a poem?
Manthipe: I cheat. I pull from the world around me. I think I am beginning to trust myself enough to rely less on that technique, which falls under the ‘write what you know’ school of knowledge.
Mahlatse: You also explore the loss of language. In the poem Home Language, you write about struggling to remember the Sesotho translation of “she”, and later in A Korean woman teaches her grandchild to count, you write:
“The closest you get to ten in Sesotho
is tharo; to heat, mollo, as in fire,
as in there is only a lick left,
only memory, only time:”
Why was it important to juxtapose losing a father and language in one collection in this manner?
Manthipe: It is a collection about my father but also a collection about loss in general – loss of identity, language, home. There’s also a personal connection there that has to do with the rules that determine what one’s mother tongue is when one grows up in a multi-lingual household.
Mahlatse: There’s a lot of remembering in this collection. What does it take to remember and excavate painful memories to write poetry?
Manthipe: It takes courage, bravery, and a support system of friends that say “yes – you are allowed to go there, and you are doing it beautifully”.
Mahlatse: The collection doesn’t shy away from digital culture but rather engages with it.
Manthipe: I am living in the digital world so of course that had to be reflected in my first collection.
Mahlatse: The poems in the collection are in conversation with each other. What was behind this decision to make the poems speak to each other?
Manthipe: Let’s say that my brain is quite a chaotic space to inhabit and so I’ve developed this strong desire for cohesion. Having the poems be in conversation with each other allowed for a more cohesive overall narrative and collection. Also, I was advised that that’s the industry standard – most collections, at least nowadays, do have some thread running through them that connects the poems
Mahlatse: Who did you write these poems for? Who do you hope they reach and speak to?
Manthipe: I wrote them for me; my younger self.
