Poety Blog

On the 16th of August we discussed two poems by Roleka Putuma namely; OH DEAR GOD, PLEASE! NOT ANOTHER RAPE POEM and GRADUATION. Both are very strong, sensitive and powerful topics. OH DEAR GOD, PLEASE! NOT ANOTHER RAPE POEM This poem is set in a template format. It is a formal style, as if the structure conveys the factual, seriousness that the poem is not saying directly. As reported and repeated numerous of times in situations of rape, the child is not believed or taken seriously. In this case the person being raped needs to find other ways to express that it is the truth. With this poem in instances like "the [children] play hide-n-seek and find grown people’s things in forbidden rooms" we see that there is more going on than is directly being said. The context of this poem is about a girl being raped by her uncle, but (as in many cases) she is not being taken serious and the uncle gets away with it. Putuma writes: "it’s easier to hold the [child] accountable f...

“Water. Water. Water. What image or feeling does this word evoke within” “Purity, storm, drought…” With today’s tutorial, I learned how to go about analyzing poems. By starting with a mere word or thought, a whole new world opens up. A world of insight and understanding or a knowledge filled world that forces you to stand back and grasp the moment. With technical tools like referring to the form, then the context and then the title, that 'moment' is more easily found. We discussed Koleka Putuma’s poem Water. She is a young, black, South- African poet. The poem is filled with racial, political and religion issues. The poem entails the black perspective and context of blacks’ experience of the beach, othering white people from the perspective of being othered.   This poem is considered an Epic for it spans across time and geography. T he time and geography stretches from the apartheid to now. From bondage to 'freedom'. The poem drips with references from when peop...