IGoli | EGoli: Poems by Salimah Valiani

The meaning of the title IGoli | EGoli: Poems, by Salimah Valiani is not self-evident without a search. What does it mean? eGoli means “Place of Gold”. It is the city of Johannesburg, or Jozi as it is also known. eGoli is the isiZulu name, a first language spoken by a quarter of the city, compared to a fifth who speak English as a first language. IsiZulu place names usually occur in their locative form, which in English we would use separate prepositions. The i- prefix is replaced with an e- prefix. For example, ‘eGoli’ translates literally as ‘to/at/in/from Johannesburg’ when iGoli is simply Johannesburg.

Although the poems are based in and around Johannesburg, poems include immigrant communities there and poems from Toronto (Tkaronto, “the meeting place”), Ottawa (adawe, “to trade”), and Calgary (Mohkinstsis, “the elbow”).

How we define and name things, how we frame things, creates implications for what our relationship is and what we do next. In this collection people are mobile, recognizing how borders and identities are porous. Valiani recognizes and gives primacy to others, including words in Gujarati, Farsi, Urdu and Hindi, Hausa, Chichewa, Luganda and more, all on equal respect with English. This is not poetry as in lineated prose memoir but poetry as listening.

It is not a project theme book because ideas are too large for one collection. It meditates as its motivation on how to live position yourself from the point of view of Love, defined perhaps as paying attention and caring. The reach of IGoli | EGoli is for a framework rather than one book as mandala or a theme book of poems. It continues from Love Pandemic by Salimah Valiani in embracing many cultures, distances and intimacies, curating quotes overheard so it is not a personal poem in the sense of memoir but having a scope of the larger world. It germinated with Letter Out: Letter In (Inanna 2009), as Valiani says, it was “the beginning of the suite of love poems that continued in subsequent collections and seems unstoppable” (p. 74).

IGoli | EGoli: Poems by Salimah Valiani is a continuation of a life project, comparable in scope to Steven Ross Smith’s life-poem. (Between 1998 & 2021, seven of his books have been published in his multi-book series.) It is comparable to Ox Lost, Snow Deep by Alice Burdick in being a sustained exploration without being redundant repetition around too narrow of subject. The focus is what unifies and bridges humanity, if a pomegranate or another food, a “crunch/ just like forty years/ four countries/ago” (p. 83).

The subjects spill into the margins, aren’t containable in poems, but runoff into fascinating footnotes, such as the one for p. 24, Eastern Cape spekboom: “Indigenous succulent that nourishes humans and works as a carbon sponge.” Such footnotes allow the reader in to what can’t be presumed as known, and yet the text doesn’t condescend to explain in its main body, nor glibly push past. It stands open with its footnotes. (Big fan of footnotes and endnotes, me.)

Some of her poem are aiming for that elusive objectivity, presenting what is without comment to get the ego out of the way of the viewing. It is a similar method to what derek beaulieu did in a poem Wild Rose Country , where he recorded every text on a suburban walk, street names, license plates, window signs.

Here, Valiani attends to the hospital environment, recording what is without internal commentary, only external jots of jerky attention. “Ontvangs B Helen Joseph Hospital/“ which starts “MEMO – ATTENTION ALL PATIENTS BLACK BAGS GENERAL WASTE/ pill boxes/ pills/ water/ I N F O R M AT I O N/ entering the system/ rush to cure/ no appointments/ no bills / no money / no doctors / INFECTIOUS WASTE – RED LINER numbers in a box / Sunday Best / queue from 7 […] headlines: Global Sugar Surplus/ NON-PENSIONERS PAY HERE / stifling air/ body heat.”

The end returns to awareness of the body. The effect doubles as jumpy and nervous as one would be in distress in a waiting room, putting the reader in sympathy, brought right there behind the writer’s eyes.

It is not bare bones and not expository, but observation as open-handed and exploratory. A similar poem brings us to another waiting room, this with the footnote of “Public hospital in Tsakane, a township feeding labour to Johannesburg.” That’s an interesting slice of context. The inventory approach is brought to “airbnb Meldene” which ends “this is not borrowed land,” and the footnote “In South Africa today, the top 10 percent of the population, some 3.5 million people, own 60% of housing, 64% of pension assets, and 99% of stocks/bonds.” with citation.

Because I like bumping against what I don’t know anything of, I find it fascinating in the detailed particulars, such as “Intraction Extraction” which starts lyrically: “I don’t know what it is to be enfolded in gold,” and then lists the archeological finds in over 270 burial mounds, including “gold/ chains plates animals of micro-soldering technique some/ 2,800 years old.”

The present isn’t glossed over but dug into. There are fruit trees and some poets or writers would stop observation there but she inquired into why fruit trees in one place but not another and finds the landscape is a result of inequality by race and taxation. This racism manifests in literal and figurative fruit. This attention is an expression of caring to look beyond the surface.

When does detail elaborate into understanding, and when does it embroider into trivia? It does anti-colonial work, pointing to what is there, the history, the fauna, the individuals. Funny how by describing the particulars we get to the universal. In Sailing in Circles Going Somewhere: Not your typical boat story, a memoir by Finley Martin (Nimbus, 2018) Martin was amused by Italians warning that everyone in their village was honest but the next village had thieves and hustlers. Which each village said up the coast while Martin encountered only good people. Similarly in “Maps”, Valiani finds warning of The Other.

Maps 

This is where the Malawians live 
the friendliest people when you go there 
everyone welcomes you
night or day you are safe 

The Nigerians No they are fine talk big 
but they won’t hurt you theirs is high class crime 

No one is like the Zimbabweans
biggest thieves they will do anything to rob you.

We map our world by our familiar partisan boundaries, whether nationality or sexuality, or poetics. We trust what and who we know and are nervous of the unknown. And we try to protect others with our warnings and our recommendations.

Although much is reported observation and reported overheard speech (with clearance for quoting respectfully noted), there are occasional breathtaking sprays of lyrical phrase such as “some Burkinabe women stretch themselves/ to be the ends that meet” (p. 52).

For someone who wants a book they can sit with and dig into, this might be their ticket.

Salimah Valiani is a poet, activist and researcher. Her 2021 poetry collection, 29 leads to love, is the 2022 Winner of The International Book Award for Contemporary Poetry. She is also the author of four other poetry collections: breathing for breadth (TSAR 2005); Letter Out: Letter In (Inanna 2009); land of the sky (Inanna 2016); Cradles (Daraja 2017). Her story-poem, Dear South Africa, was one of seven works selected for the 2019-2020 Praxis Magazine Online Chapbook Series.

Publisher: Daraja Press and Botsoso Publishing (May 22, 2024)
Paperback | 97 pages
ISBN: 978-1-990922-54-1

Pearl Pirie

Website

Pearl Pirie's WriteBulb is now available at the Apple store. A prompt app for iOS 15 and up gives writing achievement badges. Pirie’s 4th poetry collection was footlights (Radiant Press, 2020). rain’s small gestures(Apt 9 Press, 2021), minimalist poems, won the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize. Forthcoming chapbooks from Catkin Press and Turret House. Find more at www.pearlpirie.com or at patreon.com/pearlpiriepoet

Pearl Pirie

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