Breaking Bread with Zizipho Bam

Zizipho Bam, captured by Vuyo Polson.

Fate can be a funny thing. From the smallest coincidence to the most impactful consequence, those that believe in its presence know it as the force that governs our day-to-day. If you’d asked me a year ago if I was a believer, I would have told you no. But recently something shifted. A part of that shift was an eye-opening conversation I had with someone I met purely by chance – Zizipho.

Zizipho Bam is a Cape Town-based poet, writer and community builder. Raised in KZN, she found herself enamoured by poetry from a young age. She is known for her critically acclaimed anthology, Sunflowers For My Lovers, as well as the poetry space she co-hosts, SlamCity.

I sat down with Zizipho to understand her journey into the world of poetry – how she arrived where she is. When we met at The Listening Experience, I saw nothing but wisdom behind her inspiring eyes. There was something familiar in them. I wanted to know what that was, who she was and how she arrived in that room with all of us at that moment. More than anything, though, I wanted to get to know Zizi on a deeper level. The world of Poetry, SlamCity, Sunflowers for My Lovers, arts and culture in South Africa – join me as I dive into the who behind the words that are so skilfully written on paper.

Zizipho // captured by Tams Wilson.

Introduce yourself to everyone. Who is Zizipho Bam? How have you gotten here, what are you about? 

How do I even start? I'm a poet, writer. I always say I'm a copywriter by capitalism, because it was the closest thing I could find that is similar to what I love to do, and could pay me better than what I love to do. Recently, I've found myself a curator, a community builder, and a big lover. I'm about representation in the poetry space. Specifically because there aren't a lot of people like me in that space — not a lot of black girls in that space, not a lot of young black girls in that space either, so I think representation is so important for me and that's the one thing that'll often surpass all those other things.

I grew up in a predominately coloured area – a small suburb called Glenwood in Pietermaritzburg. It was mixed with Zulu people, Coloured people, Indian people. Glenwood used to be a sugar cane farm, and after South Africa gained independence and democracy, it was designated to coloured people in that area. Over time, it just became a melting pot of different cultures and we even came during that time. Even back then, the youth weren't exposed to a lot of good things, if anything at all. You had to find what will occupy you, or you end up worse off than most. I was really looking for an outlet that would have been healthy for me and just constructive growing up. 

Being a creative is a very difficult path, and yet you chose it. Poetry, speaking, expressing– at what point did you know that was for you, and how did you arrive at that decision? 

The first point would've been me discovering poetry for the first time and thinking I want to do this too.  I was probably in grade eight or something, and my cousin read my diary and he was like 'you write poetry, come to the poetry sessions.’ So I go to the first session and I'm shaking like crazy. First I watch everybody go on, and I'm like, wow. This was in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), so for me I discovered poetry in isiZulu. It was the first poetry I encountered on the stage, and I was like, this is beautiful. And I'm Xhosa, so I couldn't understand a lot of it, but I was still like 'maybe let me try out.’ And so eventually I go and perform for the first time. It was just a mess, very embarrassing, like anybody else’s first performance. But I still left with that thrill of just like, ‘I wanna do it again. I wanna do it better!' That was the moment for me that I was like, okay, this is what I love to do. This is what I want to try and dedicate my time to. 

And the second point? When and how did you arrive at that decision? 

So I find poetry in that time, and it occupies me and I know that I want to do this because I know it's keeping me away from the other paths that my friends are going on. But I also knew I wanted to do it, since I had been doing it anyway, but I didn't know there were other people doing the same thing. After High School, I leave Pietermaritzburg, I go to Johannesburg. I'm still doing poetry on the side. At some point, we start getting retrenched and I'm job hopping. I was really confused, wondering what's happening.

Eventually my mom sits me down and says, "listen, this is not sustainable, because you can't keep having this work for six months, no work for six months,", and she goes on to tell me, "if you're brave, and if you think you can do it, and you really believe you can do this, then go into poetry. Do it full time and see what comes out of this. See what you can learn and gain from that." It was such a  daunting conversation. It really does take a lot of courage to be able to do life everyday like that, you know? But I did, I took the leap, and that was now the second point where I'm like, “okay, now how do you make a living out of this?’’ It was figuring out how to say that you're a poet, professionally. And it’s where I currently am.

SlamCity, November 2024 // captured by Vuyo Polson

You mentioned how important representation is for you, how you want a young black woman from Mndantsane, from Langa, to look and think that they can do it too. With SlamCity for example, do you think that's what makes that space so important to you, the kind of community that you've built around there? 

Absolutely. Like when you talk about representation, we don't talk often enough about the people we leave behind when we host events in the evenings. And so, the fact that SlamCity takes place during the day, allows people from KwaLanga, from Delft, from Khayelitsha, from all these places, to be able to come to the Slam whenever they feel like they want to come. And that immediately exposes them to so much. Beyond that, it's young people who are in the space, and also see themselves reflected on that stage. When they see themselves in that space, then immediately they're like 'Okay, I'm capable. If that person is doing it, then I can do it too!' So yeah, SlamCity is very much about that and I'm very stubborn about the time, because I know if we move the time, we leave our whole community behind."

Family clearly has a huge influence on you and how you arrived here. How do you think they've influenced you to this point, and what is one thing you'd want to say to them now, being where you are and knowing where you want to be?

That's so sweet, I've never thought of that. For a good while, I was not allowed to do poetry, because the poetry sessions ended really late and I'd come home late. And so, it used to always be this thing that I'd hide from my family. I would get into trouble and make excuses, but somehow they caught onto that and saw it was always the same thing. There was a consistency in the things that were always getting me into trouble – it was always poetry. My mom caught on, and you know with family it's this thing, “lento yakhe yeArt. She’s artsy fartsy.” There's just no name for it. And so, it was always just that, until I published my poetry collection.

The night before my first book launch, when I was frantically packing boxes, My mom and sister were sitting with me like, “what help do you need? How can we help you? How, because we don't know this space that you're in. We don't know these things.” For the first time I had to really think about how my family can actually help me on this journey. Because the whole time I'd been hiding the thing from them, and they're like how can we help? Eventually it stopped being this thing that I'd been hiding. It's now a collaboration. So they've very much inspired professionalism in everything, which I suppose is only right because your family only wants the best for you. They want you to be able to survive in this world, in whatever you do. I had to realise that they never wanted me to stop, they just wanted me to be successful, because they love me so much. I'm grateful to have them, because I wouldn't have the stories I have today if it weren’t for their presence.

The cover of ‘Sunflowers For My Lovers’, designed by Zizipho

I think I resonate with that on a personal level, especially considering the overwhelmingly positive reaction my family had to my first exhibition. As much as you reference your first published work and the effect it had on your life, what exactly went into conceptualising and then self publishing Sunflowers For My Lovers? 

That's a beautiful question. 

Putting the book together took maybe three or four years, which is when I started writing all the poems that are in there. The concept I always explain is that I was in a relationship, and my partner back then would buy me flowers all the time. And closer to the end of the relationship, the flowers became a metaphor. Like, I'd stare at these flowers so much on the counter, and they'd die and the water would get murky. I'd watch all of that, and it became clear that these flowers were actually dead before they arrived in this room, because they were plucked from a field far far away, and then shipped to the shop and now they're on my counter. And they're somehow supposed to cheer me up but these flowers have been dead since long ago. And that was the metaphor of us trying to keep this dead thing, this dead relationship alive. Through that, I discovered what was happening between the flowers and the vase and the water. What do the flowers mean to the vase? What does the vase mean to the water? What does the water mean to the flowers? How do they keep each other sustained, not alive, during this time. That relationship for me became the start of Sunflowers for My Lovers.

I'm built like a very visual person, I suppose it's like words and visuals happening at the same time for me. When I wrote the book, I painted the cover first without initially knowing that it would be the book cover. While I was painting the cover, a poem came. And I stopped painting and started writing the poem. Halfway through the poem, I realised that I needed to change the painting. It’s as if the painting and the poem are having a conversation.  I would often see the poem in a painting or some visual media coming together, and then the words would come to me, and then I'd write the poem. Sometimes it would happen the other way around. That's how the book became what it is: the chapters are divided by the different drawings, based on which drawing came with which poem.

When it came to the poetry itself, I started to think about everything that had kept me going through this time and kept me inspired and driven – the people in my life. My lovers. It's not only romantic lovers, it's all the people I've held dearly and closely that have kept me going. Which is in essence what the collection is about: an ode to all of these lovers that I've encountered. Even the ones I haven't encountered yet. A lot of the book itself was conceptualised by me, actually getting the book published was difficult because of the pandemic. I reached out to my community to formalise it and self publish. I knew I wanted to exist in the same space as people who have been published by these huge commercial publishing houses, so I literally sat down with other collections like, “this is an award-winning collection from a very well known publishing house: how does it compare, what does it look like compared to mine?” I had to think about things I'd never thought about before: paper, ink, typography, and I've read books all my life! I knew what I liked, but I didn't understand the book making of it all, down to the stitch. So it took me a while, and a lot of renditions. Eventually, I got to a point where I was like, “okay. I'm happy with this one now.” As happy as I could've been.

How has it changed your life?

Oh my God. I said earlier that I self published, and I thought I would do the thing alone. But I didn't, and that's what changed. Everyone showed up. I remember my book launch in Jo’burg. The people that I lived with in Jo’burg were people I met in high school that we all went to the same university, or bumped into each other in that Jo’burg space. And five years later, here I am doing a book launch and I saw everyone. Like, people I met at a random show one day and they were like, 'I'm coming to your book launch.' They were all there. Even my friend from primary school. Everyone showed up. I toured across the country from Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Bloemfontein -- I went everywhere. All of those people I had met throughout my journey were all there. I sold out in every city that I went to and did my book launch. The books were gone. I came with boxes and left with nothing. For me, that's what changed my life because I realised those people had always been there and they were just waiting for a moment to celebrate you and to show up for you -- and they all came through. And they're all still here, following the journey.  They showed me that it doesn't just have to be sunflowers for my lovers. Whatever else I’m doing, they’ll still be there. It really was a testament to how as writers we write alone, so you think the whole journey you're going to go alone 'cause that's the process of it, but once it's out there, once you give it to someone else, it's no longer yours. It's theirs too. So now it means it's our thing that we're going to take care of. I've realised that I have people there around me, for me, with me, the whole time. And those people are never going anywhere.

Zizipho // captured by Torsten Clear Rybka

In the wake of everything, you've been around a lot. From coming to Cape Town for the Motse Collective to flying down to Durban for Poetry On The Lawn, you're all over. From your travels, what have you learnt the most and what would you say to past Zizipho, who maybe didn't think she'd be travelling all over the country?

Younger me always used to fantasise so much about what it would be like to grow up and to be an artist. I always knew I'd be an artist but I didn't know what specifically. I always think younger me would think damn, you're so cool. So firstly, I'd tell her that she's okay and that she's doing fine, you know? Telling her that she would find her people. It always felt like being a needle in a haystack, so I would tell her that there would be people to help her along her path. Because travelling throughout the country with poetry has really shown me that there's more of us, a lot more of us than we think it is.

And in fact, sorry to say, but South African poets are the best! We really are the writers we think we are, genuinely. And I say this because I've experienced poetry from around the country, and every time I'm in awe at how people are writing this kind of work. And realising how connected we are. Again, all of it only being possible through travelling and seeing other poets showing up for other poets. It's the connectivity that happens. We all want the same thing for this industry we're trying to build. The thing we need more is the policy and backing, official backing from government and private investors. From the community at large, that's what we need. So for me, that's what travelling showed me: we're a lot more alike than we think.

You mentioned the people that have guided you on this path and the people you've been able to meet through your travels. You host SlamCity with Thapelo Tharaga. How did you guys come to meet each other and how has his support guided you to co-create this community and how do you think you've guided him? What have you learnt from each other and what has it been like to create this space you dreamed of having when you were younger and for dozens of other young people?

I met Thapelo, probably in 2016-17 in Johannesburg at Word and Sound, which is another poetry slam that we were a part of. It was the longest standing slam poetry at the time in Johannesburg, and we were all so hungry for it— the stage. So I meet Thapelo in that space, and very soon after that he moves to Cape Town, and he then starts Word and Sound Cape Town with a few other poets. When I moved to Cape Town, it's just before COVID, and there's absolutely nothing happening in the poetry space. When I found him, I was like it means that there's more of us. Back then, he told me about how Word and Sound was unsuccessful, that poets in Cape Town don't want to slam. And I was like, how do we get them and entice them? We spent a lot of time brainstorming how we can make slam poetry attractive to poets in Cape Town, because they're so afraid of the competitiveness of it all. We were like, okay we need to get a good stage and a prize. We sat down one day, we did a proposal, brainstormed a bunch of names and sent out the proposal to a bunch of theatres and venues in Cape Town. And the Baxter Theatre comes back to us, saying they like the concept. We settled on the name SlamCity, which is 'Slam C-T, Slam Cape Town.' For now, Cape Town is the space we wanted to build and nurture. Especially when it comes to competitiveness in the poetry space. It's important for us to make a space where people's work gets critiqued. If you say something controversial on stage, someone must come and ask you why you're bringing this conversation up or someone must say that this is an important thing you brought up, thank you. Overtime, we noticed people were growing on stage. They're coming and speaking about things that are important. 

I think working with Thapelo, we're so blessed to have each other. We're similar but different in many ways. He's really good at the formal admin, strategic, managerial things. So he'll do all the admin side, the leases and paperwork. I'll always focus on making the poets feel safe and at home, being on the mic and hosting. We always try to work on each other's strengths like that. Making sure everyone feels at peace. In the background, they're a lot of people helping us bring the vision together. Zizi, our stage manager who has been doing a phenomenal job. We have you (Vuyo) who came and took beautiful photographs just the other day. The community coming in like, “hey, we see what you're doing. We want to help bring the vision to life.” We're in it for the long run. As poets, we know we have good intentions for the craft, and so I know he'll always prioritise the poetry and the poets. So it's really lovely working with someone like that. You feel so much safer.

Zizipho // captured by Lulu Ezra

I think it comes full circle. VERVE was originally only at the NNSC’s first Listening Experience by a chance encounter with MasterKii, same with me meeting Andrea who invited me to join her at NNSC , where we all eventually met each other. Andrea, by chance, came across your work and invited you to be a guest at Planet Poetry. Are you someone who believes in fate and higher powers playing a role in things happening for us to arrive here today?

Nothing is in vain, Vuyo. I believe in God. I believe there is absolutely no mistake in us even sitting here and having this conversation right now, just like there was no mistake in so many other stories I can point to. I remember receiving an email one day from Siphokazi Jonas and I freaked out because I'm like, Siphokazi is literally one of my favourite poets ever. How is she in my mailbox right now, talking to me? In the email she was like, 'I saw you are in Cape Town. I have a gig I can't make it to that I'd like you to perform at, here's my manager's number, please connect with these people, this is when the gig is. Go.' That was the first gig I went to in Cape Town that paid me, paid me well. And I continued to get that gig two years afterwards. And that was because of Siphokazi. She is now a dear sister of mine, like, we have gone through the journey of her creating her book, Weeping Becomes a River. I remember when she finished it, ‘the manuscript is done! It's no longer mine, I don't know how to deal.' It was beautiful being like, I have admired this person for so long but here I am now sharing my experience writing and she's valuing it so much. And I'm like, it can only be God. Because what the heck? Someone you see as a mentor, a leader, a pioneer in this space now becomes a colleague, a sister, a friend who checks in on you. For me, I think that God was trying to show me that the people that seemed so far away from me are not that far, actually. They're just like you and me, right here and close by. God was like, 'no no, I'm gonna bring her close to you here so that you can grow, so that you can grow together.'

My name is at the back of Siphokazi's book, she acknowledges me, and I'm like what is happening. And it's not only Siphokazi, it's plenty others. Thandiwe Nqanda, Koleka Putuma, so many poets in this space that God has shown me are close. He’s allowed my heroes and I to sit at the same table, so we can eat and break bread together. It’s a reminder that I'm doing okay and I'm on the right path. it always goes back to community, it's about the people around you. Siphokazi always says, 'when you network, you network horizontally, because it's about the people next to you, around you, that are gonna help you go to the next stage.'It's just about opening your mouth and asking. Because you don't know until you ask.

I've learnt a lot speaking with you today: community, listening, cherishing moments, trusting yourself and knowing you're not alone. As creatives, we think we're alone, especially since our craft is in our heads. We always need to have these moments. For my last question, I want to ask you: what do you define as a creative, and what do you hope to see for creatives in the future -- in Cape Town and South Africa?

Firstly, I think that we're all creatives. Every single person has the ability to write a poem, a good poem. Everyone has that creative spark in them. But what I wish for us is the guidance, the spaces that unlock that creativity. The spaces that unlock the room to play and not put too much pressure in producing. A lot of us only discover our creativity in school, where you have to put in all your effort to get a good mark in class. But what happens when you get to just play, when nobody is gonna see it. I think that's the space we need to allow ourselves to exist a lot of the time, because that's where we discover the good ideas, especially those that solve our problems. I think creatives can solve a lot of the problems we face as a society. If we were just given the money, the time and the space to solve them -- we would. Social justice issues has creative solutions, engineering has creative solutions. Technology, medicine, so many things. At the intersection of it all is creativity. And that's when you solve the problem for the people. It's just the soft spot of it all.

I also want the space for creatives to play with each other. Sitting in a room and just writing about random things that nobody is gonna read, and we'll just sit there and laugh, and move on with our lives, you know? A lot of creatives are under pressure to produce and survive, and there's no room just to be, which stifles a lot of creativity. It stifles that journey, so much so that people end up leaving their crafts. They're not enjoying it as much because there's so much pressure to produce. We're always working so hard, when do we get to rest? Don't drop the album, savour it. Sit with it and listen to it and savour the moment. We rarely get time to just sit with our own art and be like, 'yeah.' There's this deadline and that show starting and the next one happening. It's always time for the next thing. I want us to have the space to be. That's what I want for us. That's what I want for you: to be able to just sit with this interview, sit with your photographs and just look at it and just be like, “ahhh, that gives me great pleasure.” Before you move on, before you jump to the next idea, to the next job. That pause and play. That's what I wish for.

Zizipho Bam, captured by Vuyo Polson.

This has truly been a full circle moment. A few months ago, I wrote a letter speaking about my motivation for joining VERVE – in it, I spoke about how before then I hadn’t unearthed my creativity, about how VERVE was a large part of me discovering it, and about how I wish to do the same for others who are yet to realise their potential. Before I met Jeriah and Ntsika, before I joined the team, I met Andrea, who invited me to the first Listening Experience hosted by North North Social Club. It was there I met everybody, but before I met them, I met Zizipho Bam. Andrea introduced me to her as ‘our adoptive little brother’, but after getting to know Zizi, it truly feels like I’ve gained a sister. 

Zizi’s work and the kindness of her soul are tangible and go hand-in-hand. So much so that those that break bread with her are taken aback by the warmth she radiates. I know I was. I hope those reading got to catch a glimpse of that feeling, like a sunflower basking in the sun.