‘A Haunting of Ancestors’: The Conjuring of Memory in Indigenous South African Poetry

Abstract

This paper focuses on the interaction of language, the physical and psychological body and the environment in creating a conjuring of ancestors in indigenous South African poetry. The ‘haunting’ of the ancestors is mirrored by the intergenerational word-traces in the indigenous poems. These ‘poetic bodies’ are laced with word and phrase markers that consist of culturalspecific metonyms, metaphors and archetypes. The poetic bodies are subsequently stringed together by the word-traces that pulsate in the chromosomes and the minds of the progeny. They order the remembrance and re-membrance of the ancestors within a specific culturalhistorical context. Significantly, these ‘poetic bodies’ are conduits of consciousness that reflect communal practices or archetypes and images of loss and gain.

Keywords

• indigenous poetry
• ancestors
• poetic bodies
• intergenerational memory
• remembering