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Tjawangwa Dema

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Tjwangwa Dema, famously known as TJ Dema, is a Motswana poet, educator, literary events and project producer. She is currently an honorary senior research associate at the University of Bristol.

Quotes

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  • "Do not ask me what I good poem is, I only know one when I see or smell it, hear it coming, or sense it scrambling off the stage or page".





  • "I remember seeing the sky as it scrunched its face, filling its cheeks with smoke hurling rage at every mans' door".





  • The world is not in a slow moment... So many people are practicing how to be faster and we all want our books out yesterday and so many things are demanding speed of us or we are demanding it of ourselves, but learning new approaches requires slowness.[1]
  • May I never be a slave to speed... I am making choices all the time about which scuffles I am willing to find myself in... Still, if like me you are more nuanced, you will instead say, let’s interrogate, let’s ask three more questions before we settle on fire.[2]
  • I suppose writing is revising and editing and hoping you know just when to stop. It's always serious work for me, it just happens to be work whose reward is worth staying with the trouble for.[3]
  • The poem as a form is a construct, its architecture is intentional and therefore its language is unnatural or not naturally occurring. It can take a whole poem to convey what could otherwise be a look between two people or the poem might successfully convey in a line what could never be spoken out loud over a lifetime.[4]
  • When you write you are engaged in a process of discovery, you are trying to work out what it is you think, feel, or know about a subject.[5]
  • I'm a communal creature but some of that community has to do with being silent and observing. Language and imagination suit me because I like people but like my space too.[6]
  • Home is anywhere – I insist on that possibility even as I recognise that officials have the power to put you on a plane and ship you to a country you haven't ever been to... Home has not been one place for me for a long time...
  • I am interested in what moves us, what makes us human, and how we negotiate the spaces we occupy—physically, emotionally, and politically.
  • Nothing is less faithful. Less real. Or more untrue than a dream... I will not spin and spin inside this skin. I will not mourn a future I never had... Choose to be the dream I am in right now. Maybe then it won't be so hard. Just to breathe right now.
  • Who amongst us knows whether our mothers truly favour silence, or whether the price of asking a man where he has been is far greater than the shame of knowing?”
  • May he never know that a crossing does not mean better, safer... I make a bridge of blood and bone, of sinew and lung, for him.

References

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  1. ↑ https://toluagbelusi.com/site/2020/05/23/may-i-never-be-a-slave-to-speed/?hl=en-US
  2. ↑ https://shamsrumi.org/poets-talk-5-questions-with-tj-dema/?hl=en-US
  3. ↑ https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/dreams-10320?hl=en-US#:~:text=That%20have%20no%20wish%20to%20be%20fixed.,to%20breathe%20right%20now.%20%C2%A9%20TJ%20Dema.
  4. ↑ https://shamsrumi.org/poets-talk-5-questions-with-tj-dema/?hl=en-US#:~:text=I've%20carried%20some%20of%20that%20practice%20over,never%20be%20spoken%20outloud%20over%20a%20lifetime.
  5. ↑ https://shamsrumi.org/poets-talk-5-questions-with-tj-dema/?hl=en-US#:~:text=Tjawangwa%20Dema%3A%20I'm%20a%20communal%20creature%20but,as%20in%20my%20relationships%20off%20the%20page.
  6. ↑ https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/dreams-10320?hl=en-US#:~:text=That%20have%20no%20wish%20to%20be%20fixed.,to%20breathe%20right%20now.%20%C2%A9%20TJ%20Dema.
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