On the eve of the multi-award-winning writer, performer and poet Siphokazi Jonas’ forthcoming debut, Penguin Random House poetry collection, Weeping Becomes a River, released in September 2024, the latter part of 2024, into 2025 looks to be an eventful and confirmatory career trajectory for the firebrand.
Siphokazi Jonas is a weaver of seemingly discordant worlds; growing up in an Afrikaans dorpie, attending an English boarding school, and going on annual holidays to a village, emaXhoseni, during the transition years of South Africa’s democracy made this a necessity.
In Weeping Becomes a River, she confronts the linguistic and cultural alienation experienced as a black learner in former Model C schools in the 1990s and early 2000s. Then, she fashions the fragments to reclaim and rewrite her place within a lineage of storytellers.
Migrating between forms, poetry and intsomi, she navigates the waters of tradition, religion, intergenerational experiences of rural and urban spaces, and how family dynamics affect the body. She is not only a referee of the raging tensions within her but also pieces together a language for pathways of leaving and returning.
Her poems grapple with the past, the present, and possible futures without forgetting that “the body is marked territory from birth, and the scent of it never leaves”.
Endorsements as to her talent and ongoing contribution to the literary arts are multiform. Still, one of the most significant is that written by the esteemed film score composer Trevor Jones in the foreword to Weeping Becomes a River.
“Her writing has an underlying political relevance, not only as a commentary on the politics of South Africa and her ethnicity but also as an eagerness to address and redress the gender balance. In this work, she juxtaposes a mythic story with poems, creating an intriguing world through this unusual narrative form, conjuring up new experiences and realities and triggering ideas that resonate in the reader’s mind.
“I would encourage those curious to allow themselves to journey with her into a world where she conjures up unfamiliar experiences and creates captivating realities imbued with fascination and intrigue. In her word paintings of a world with all its attendant emotions, she crafts languages to convey tangible and intangible ideas. The unfamiliar becomes familiar as her choice of words and their relevance creates a unique form of poetry redolent with meaning, atmosphere and depth of emotion.”
The months ahead are alive with the opportunity to engage with Weeping Becomes a River and the author as she embarks on a book tour that will take her across South Africa and around the world.
For starters, come September, The Open Book Festival looks forward to welcoming Siphokazi back to host as part of their annual literature celebration.
Between the 6th and 8th of September, poetry lovers and those curious to embrace original creative writing that speaks to a South African reality and a global audience keen to understand the power of prose better come together at this imperative imbizo.
After the success of #WeAreDyingHere, and as her first official engagement in celebration of only the second poetry book to be published by Penguin Random House in South Africa, patrons will get the opportunity to hear from the author herself and enjoy a selection of works that make up this gripping collection.
To secure your limited pre-order and autographed copies of Weeping Becomes a River, go to https://siphokazijonas.com/.
For more information, please contact Martin Myers – martmyers@gmail.com
or 083 448 4475.
CLICK HERE to submit your press release to MyPR.co.za.
Author: Martin Myers from Triple M entertainment on behalf of Siphokazi Jonas.
Watch a Siphokazi Jonas Debut Poetry Collection Published by Penguin Random House In Book Stores Now video:
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