Dimakatso Sedite
Yellow Shade evokes the stark textures of township and rural community life: the beauty and passion, the cruelty and humour, the noise, music and stillness. Sedite’s poems are constructed from unpredictable images – ‘a rain-sniffing wind’, ‘the knuckles of chairs’, a cupboard ‘wailing like a dog left alone in a garage’ – in a gritty language entirely her own.
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An emotionally powerful, richly allusive poet speaking the language of pictures rather than overt narrative. Sometimes the concentration and sudden divergence of images make a given poem obscure… I’m reminded of harsh, rich, crowded brush strokes […] Themes of death, betrayal, illness, abuse. Builds the commonplace textures, colours, smells of township and rural life into complex, sophisticated images of feeling and being. Underlying a sense of bitterness, despair, loss in her image-crammed world. Occasionally hope emerges, either randomly, or through the liberating power of creative work.
– Ken Barris
