Poets use their art to fight poverty
Chippa Legodimo | Monday August 25, 2014 16:11
The crowd listened attentively and intensely as sad stories of poverty and its effects were shared. Participating poets recited touching poems. The darkness that filled the space made it scarier to listen to gruesome stories of innocent souls enduring nightmarish and gloomy days due to poverty.
Various poets converged at the school for the second edition of the Poetry Against Poverty show, each of them narrating the touching predicament in a different way.
The event was organised to raise funds for struggling families in Kopong and Tsolamosese. First on stage was Lame, whose piece title Stolen explored the difficult choices individuals are often forced to make in life and how some find it difficult to accept their fate.
The voluble poetess also illustrated how often people with a better economy are not bothered to see the poor going through the difficulties.
“Everyone stands but stares/not realising that they have the potential to help those poor souls from sliding into deep poverty,” a line from Lame’s poem.
Poet Spoken paid tribute to women with The Idea Of A Woman . His piece put scone on those individuals who often see women as sex objects ready to satisfy a man’s orgasm.
The touching part of the session started to hover when Ivan recited A Little Compassion and thus giving it a lot of emotion and human face. Highlighting the hardships faced by poor children, he illustrated how some of them end up sleeping under culverts in cold weather haunted by nightmares resulting from the feeling of fear and insecurity
Thus in trying to block the nightmare and bring a little peace to their spirits, the youngsters often find solace in a tin of glue, which further complicates their situation and dims any hopes for a better future.
Kwasi ADw shared with the audience how at times people would claim to care about the poor and speak of “oneness” yet the greed inside them makes them quickly forget about their struggling brothers and sisters the moment they face another direction. He also noted that the unwillingness to try harder also demotes many to a sad state of poverty.
“Life is a struggle because love is unsentimental / fear has destroyed more dreams than failure has,” he said.