Swimming versus Drowning

Sihle Ntuli

poem text in three columns: column 1: nobody tells you how           the art of drowning                   each harsh stroke    leads you deeper into          the sudden realisation                                                     of all the loss at sea                                                        the bottom of the ocean                                          could well be the place                                   for the body’s eternal sleep                        column 2: it all begins from a body pulling downwards        on calm waters       the meditative parts of an ocean filled with boundless possibilities to discover the will to float  or the minds transcendence column 3: underwater your hands moving the forced ripples of soul & all its depth the undiscovered self the water a lesson on destiny towards the art of swimming

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Centre for Stories

Sihle Ntuli was born in KwaMashu in 1990. He holds an MA in Classics from Rhodes University, Makhanda, and has lectured at the Universities of Johannesburg and the Free State. He has also held fellowships at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies and the Centre for Stories, Western Australia. He is the recipient of the 2025 Caselberg Trust  Margaret Egan Cities of Literature Writers Resident at Dunedin, UNESCO City of Literature.

He is the author of two previous collections of poetry and two chapbooks, including Rumblin’, previously published by uHlanga. He is the winner of the 2024/2025 Diann Blakely Poetry Competition, a 2024 Best of the Net winner, and a former editor of New Contrast. He lives in Durban.

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Owele
uHlanga

Durban, South Africa

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In Owele, Sihle Ntuli meditates on the origins of his family, clan and language through the earthen-toned rivers of the Zulu world.

The history of the land becomes the history of the person – but do rivers flow to a beat as blood does? The answers are not always as clear as the surface suggests.

Shifting between English and isiZulu, Ntuli’s unique, jazz-inflected poetry here reaches a new level of innovation, vulnerability and delight.

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