Loud and Yellow Laughter (Botsotso, 2016) by Sindiswa Busuku-Mathese has won the 2018 Ingrid Jonker Prize, which is given in alternate years to the best debut poetry collection in English, or Afrikaans. (The poet is completing her PhD in the English Department at Stellenbosch University, on a Graduate School doctoral scholarship.)
We are delighted by the news of Sindi’s latest success!
The 2018 Ingrid Jonker Prize judges (Sindiwe Magona, Helen Moffett and John Cartwright, all of whom, as is customary with this award, were unaware of one another’s identities until judging had been concluded), described Busuku-Mathese’s winning entry as “completely original”, the poet opting to present “family history as a play, in which the narrator is an unreliable character”. The poet is celebrated for “the mix of World War 2 history, the narrator’s dilemmas about being adopted, and the way she manages to weave these together without ever losing her balance or falling into incongruity”. Also singled out is the poet’s decision to offer “fragments in several voices, some of them ‘reconstructed’ ”. The result is a collection that “movingly reflects the quest of the ‘The Girl Child’, as intimate ‘curator’ of family memory and experience, to integrate the surprising puzzle that is her current self”. (Read more at http://slipnet.co.za/)