Publisher's Synopsis
Gol EGoliya sociopolitical reading of Johannesburg/iGoli drawing on its famous, and not so famed people, places, plants and pronouncements. Featuring the city's well known and lesser known histories, presents, and words, the medium used is poetry: for its unique ability to tap into the emotional, the subconscious, the unsaid, that underlie many of the city's motivations. While not shying from violence and divisions, iGoli is presented as a meeting place: a place of original,
transnational subnational, and primordial origins Building on Salimah Valiani's poetry collection, 29 leads to love; 2022 Winner of the International Book Award for Contemporary Poetry fragments of the larger love found in Jozi pepper the collection. These love fragments, and iterations of inimba (empathy, loosely translated from isiXhosa), are dffered aleads to building unity. Via thenes of migration, multiplicity. ecology, and love, and a range of lived experiences of inequality Igoli EGoli offers a pathbreaking means to reconsider and, transform the world city iGoli, and quite possibly, other cities too.