‘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 cultural-specific 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 cultural-historical context. Significantly, these ‘poetic bodies’ are conduits of consciousness that reflect communal practices or archetypes and images of loss and gain.