Sarinah paints the colours of her emotions in words

“Poetry is my world, my voice! When I cannot utter a single word, poetry voices my views, thoughts, opinions, and heartfelt feelings that I cannot really say out loud most of the time,” said first-time-published poet, Funanani Sarinah Mukwevho. Her book With All My Colours was released last Friday.

Sarinah matriculated from Mudinane Secondary School, after which she continued her studies. “I studied towards a BA degree in communications, and now I am doing my bachelor’s degree in education, with a specialty in history and geography,” she said. “I have always been a magazine girl; I will browse through the pages of magazines, and whenever I read the editor’s notes, I wish and pray to one day become an editor at Bona or True Love magazine, so reading is one of my favourite hobbies.”

As a young girl, Sarinah started writing letters to her friends, as well as writing love letters on behalf of her friends. “I knew then that ink and paper would become my best buddies. This passion or fire in me grew with each passing day as I isolated myself from the world. I was bullied a lot when I was young, right until matric, by both boys and girls,” she said. “I still write a poem every single day of my life.”  

Sarinah wrote most of the poems that appear in With All My Colours in 2015, when she was studying at university. But she lacked motivation to write seriously until her friend, avant-garde poet Prudence Bopape, published her own collection of poems called This Heart Only Beats for You.

“I was motivated enough to pen my own thoughts onto paper, so I decided I would paint the world ‘with all my colours’, which is simply the colours of my love, anger, agony, happiness, peace, confusion and every other emotion you could possibly think of,” she said. “I wanted to share all these colours with the world after I realised that I am not the only one with all these colours.”

Sarinah’s poetry collection was published by Vhakololo Press, an established publishing initiative that aims to cultivate a culture of reading and writing in Southern Africa.

Sarinah’s greatest inspiration has always come from nature itself, and how everything co-exists. “I am a very inquisitive person, so whenever something disturbs my thoughts, I write,” she said. “I love how William Shakespeare and Maya Angelou play around with words; I love how their words challenge my own intelligence, and how much their words allow me to tap into my imaginary world.”

Sarinah Mukwevho is available on Facebook (Sareena Mukwevho) and can be reached on 079 504 5875. With All My Colours is available directly from the author or Vhakololo Press at R180.

Entertainment - Date: 13 May 2021

Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

Email: [email protected]