a naked bone

Mangaliso Buzani was awarded African Poetry Book Fund’s 2019 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, for this collection a naked bone.

In simple vocabulary a naked bone describes complex states of beauty and suffering, often at the borderline where life meets death. In their dreamlike rhythms and images, the poems draw strength from Xhosa culture, Christianity, and elements of nature. They are love poems in the widest sense, embracing the interface between daily life and the spiritual, enacting joy and caring in the face of deprivation and mourning.