“The Long Walk Home for a Street Dweller” trumps 400 other entries and older contestants, taking top honours in QuickFox Publishing's poetry competition, written by Zanoxolo Mkhize who's only 25 years old.

The Long Walk Home for a Street Dweller 

Bare Feet walks on thorns whistling,

knock-kneed, calling cattle to greener pastures

from early morning – sun glistening –

till moon shines behind black walls signalling

the long walk home.

“But, shit, one calf missing –

calf, eating neighbours drought-stricken maize?”

Bare Feet’s scared of beating,

so, instead, Bare Feet walks on thorns pissing,

not willing to go back to beatings and blood-christenings at home.

Instead, Bare Feet walks on roads, searching.

No more cattle, no more calves –

an unforgiving world, where grass doesn’t grow,

and buildings beg for your sweat,

and pavements are never lonely (with companions from all places) – so

Bare Feet finds shoes, tattered and torn, and a coat riddled with lice.

Bad advice leads Bare Feet to glue in grassless jungle,

then to theft, then to jail.

And when finally dead in prison, Bare Feet, who became Bare Soul

stripped naked by prison scavengers, became no more bare metaphors.

Bare Feet, remembering, walking on thorns whistling,

knock-kneed, calling cattle to greener pastures

from early morning – sun glistening –

till moon shines behind black walls signalling

the long walk home.

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Two runner up prizes were won by Mea Lashbrooke, of Cape Town, and Kobus Moolman of KwaZulu-Natal -- who is also a prize winner of the South African Literary Awards competition.

Commendation list includes Nasima Ali, Sihle Ntuli, Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso, Tebogo Tlharipe, Mosa Leshilo, Bathandwa Vazi, Carel Alberts and Frances Hardie

This was a national competition, spearheaded by Quickfox Publishing, although the competition attracted entries from the Southern African region. Calls for entries started early in the year, and ended 31 of July, 2011.

Prize-giving will be held on the 2 November, in Cape Town, at The National Library’s Centre for The Book – the prize giving is open to the top-ranking contributors, national sponsors, Distell Foundation sponsors, selected guest invites and media. 

Quickfox Publishing spearheaded this poetry competition for Southern Africans, which was proudly sponsored by the National Library’s Centre for the Book, The Distell Foundation, BizAfrica, and MegaDigital.

"We had entries from 18 year olds and 90 year olds! From around South Africa. It was a tremendous show of support for the writing industry in SA!" says Neil de Jager, Editorial Project Manager for Quickfox Publishing.

The competition drew entries from amateurs and multi-award winning writers – including winners of the Olive Schreiner, and Nadine Gordimer Prizes, and also the South African Literary Awards prize. Selected entries are compiled in the commemorative anthology for the competition, entitled The Ground’s Ear – Contemporary Verse from Southern Africa, 2011.

Source: Quick Fox publishing