NEW Brighton jeweller and martial arts instructor Mangaliso Buzani has launched a collection of poetry, Ndisabhala Imibongo, at the National English Literary Museum (Nelm) in Grahamstown.

Buzani's first collection of Xhosa poems is described as "ushering the Xhosa language to a deeper level of silence and dreams, far away from the noise of man's language".

The reader arrives in a fairy tale place of longing, landscapes and pure ideas — a place not without suffering, but one more aligned to the infallibility of truth than to the narrated fiction of headline news.

Buzani began writing poetry after joining Uncwadi Writers Association in New Brighton, and his work has been published in numerous South African magazines, including Carapace, New Coin and Kotaz.

This year Mangaliso graduated with distinction in the MA in Creative Writing Programme at Rhodes University, and his book, Ndisabhala Imibongo, formed the Xhosa section of his MA thesis.

Nelm education and public programmes manager Zongezile Matshoba said he enjoyed hearing the poems read by the multi-faceted Buzani.

"These artists are fascinating. There is a lot that comes out of them — you get surprised! We do host book launches and, given his study here, we joined with the Institute for the Study of English in Africa, who co-ordinated the creative writing programme."

Article by: Gillian McAinsh

Article source: Herald