Koleka Putuma

South African poet, playwright and performer, Koleka Putuma published Collective Amnesia in 2017, a collection of poetry that met with widespread success in South Africa and internationally. At the crossroads of the intimate and the collective, the personal and the political, this work questions the condition of its author: a black, lesbian woman from a working-class background who grew up in a country still marked by its colonial heritage. From this position at the intersection of oppressions, Putuma explores the strata of memory, both living and repressed.

She is also the founder of Manyano Media, a structure aimed at supporting women writers and theater professionals who identify as black, queer and female.

Koleka Putuma's poetry is rooted in two major traditions: slam, a socially charged art of speech, and the Christian religion, which haunts her work as much as it challenges its existence. This tension between imposed faith and subversive creation is one of the central themes of Collective Amnesia.
Carried by a powerful, demanding breath, and deeply rooted in its time and social context, Putuma's poetry reminds us that this genre can unite and act as a force. It asserts itself as a space of freedom, free from temporal, narrative or formal constraints. Through this freedom, Koleka Putuma doesn't always tell the story, but she does say - forcefully - the complexity of the world around her.

Photo: Matthew Muller