In December of 2023, almost a year ago, the prize giving ceremony of the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award was held at the Gauteng International Book Fair in Soweto. I could not go, being my father’s primary caregiver. On that day, my brother’s girlfriend buried her mother and I had the flu. I won first place. It was the first time anything of that nature had happened to me. When I heard the news, I turned to my mother and looked at her face. She was the first person I told. Looking at her face was acknowledgement enough. All the years of relapse and difficulty, struggle, challenge and hardship that I had been through had taught me that before triumph arrives that there would always be adversity. It has always been my mother’s unconditional love that has carried me through what I had faced in my life.

When I was a pre-teen, my mother bought me my first typewriter, such was her devotion, faith and belief in me. It was a typewriter from the high school she taught at. My father bought me my first electric typewriter at a local shopping mall on my mother’s instructions. My mother is a tall, slender and beautiful woman, and in her seventies now, although she looks decades younger. She loves gardening, her grandchildren and cooking for her family. She never proofreads my work, that has always been my father’s job, his domain. My mother even typed out my first poetry manuscript when I was twelve years old for a competition. I didn’t win or place anywhere but that was the official start to my writing career.

My mother has lost a sister and two brothers. She is the strongest person I know, and has taught me to be brave. At night I watch her very carefully as she withdraws into her own world listening to gospel music. Does she still have a vision for her life? In the morning I watch her as she rubs lotion onto her cheeks, as she applies mascara and does the rest of her makeup. I wonder if she is happy? And if she isn’t, why isn’t she, is it my fault? She’s made of a kind of winter light and her facial features are made of a kind of pale hardness. I can see her sadness and the loneliness that she can’t hide from me or anyone else for that matter. My mother, like my sister who lives in Europe, is an enigma to me. To me, my mother is a poem.

I have never held down a steady 9 to 5 job primarily because of illness. I write and have made a career out of writing. The depression has never left me and I have gravitated towards the American poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I think of the two of them in Boston at a poetry workshop and I think of how I have struggled over the years to get my own writing going. Sexton wrote consistently about her own mental illness. I think of the book a poet-friend sent me of her wearing a white capri pants and espadrilles and matching shirt, her dark bobbed hair lending an aura and mystique to this personality. I wanted to write like Sexton but she came with emotional baggage, wounded feelings, a broken heart, and mental illness in much the same way that I did.

I remember how the child cried when the puppy died. At first I thought the puppy was sleeping at the back of the kennel. But he didn’t move for hours. Google said the mother eats the dead young (this seemed macabre to me but humanity knows nothing of the depths of the animal world) or perhaps the husky buried the dog somewhere in the yard. I was very sad and I, too, cried. When I think of that time now I think of it being a blue period of my life. I think of keeping a diary again now as I sit here writing this. A momentum seems to gather and increase as I collect my thoughts. The housekeeper works around me and my father in the house. The sounds of the mop being pushed and pulled across the floor is soothing. The handyman packs the pieces of broken tile into a sturdy cardboard box. He is finished with the rooms at the back of the house and will move onto the next room, the next broken tile.

I think of Anne Sexton in Bedlam. I think of myself in all the psychiatric hospitals and facilities that I have been in. I can still write. The “gift”, the talent that God has bestowed upon me has never left me. For myself I have this to say about the omnipotent God. It has been having a spiritual outlook on life that has saved me. In the afternoon, I go outside and spend time with my dogs. I sit on a chair under a forest of trees and take my shoes off and I “ground” myself by placing my feet on the soil. I felt energised by doing this somehow. In the mornings, I make my bed up. I think of my mother who is strong, fierce, and spiritual. I think of her introverted nature, her personality with friends, how she planted roses in her terminally ill friend’s garden, and how she maps out her life around my illness on a daily basis.

I wait for my mother to return to me. She is running errands. My father is seated opposite me. He is reading. I realise now I will always be searching for the winter light that is my mother in this world, the next world and when she is no longer here by my side to guide me. She is the prize. My mother has been and will always be the prize. So, here is what I would have said that day if the European Union Ambassador to South Africa had handed me the award. For what it’s worth, here’s my belated speech (albeit a year late).

“Thank you mummy, for everything. For all the sacrifices you made, for believing in me when no one else did, for loving me when I was sick, and for loving me when I was well. Thank you for driving me to the psychiatrist, and to numerous counselling sessions. Thank you for taking me to church. Thank you for teaching me to aim high, that “it’s not if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game”. Thank you for never giving up on me. Your love is and was a bridge to wellness, to achievement and possibility. You are the reason I am standing here today. This is for you. For your love, grace, truth and beauty and everything you taught me about myself, and life. I love you, mum. This prize belongs to you more than it does to me. I wouldn’t be who I am today, where I am, if it wasn’t for you. I am the poet, but you are the poetry. You are to be found in every line, in every motion, feeling, wave, and rhythm. I love you. I will always love you. With my whole heart and being, I thank you mum.”