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No slogans, but poetry | Sarah Uheida
4 days ago
Each year, South Africans observe 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children and recommit themselves to protecting the younger and more vulnerable members of society.
But what does it mean to observe such a time imaginatively?
Sarah Uheida is a multi-award-winning young poet and essayist born in Libya, who escaped the Civil War there with her family and moved to South Africa at the age of 13. Her stunning debut poetry collection, Not This Tender (Dryad Press, 2025) was published recently. In it, she chronicles many challenges that would be recognisable to South African women and children, such as access to primary healthcare and the threat of sudden as well as slow, structural violence. Her own journey of loss and migration has allowed her to create what she calls a “grammar of absence”, a body of work that laments and rejoices at the same time.
We asked her how she would like 16 Days of Activism to be celebrated more creatively and consciously in the future.
“I think this time should truly belong to women and children. We don’t need others to speak on our behalf – we need space to say the thing in our own language, even if it’s raw, unfinished, contradictory. I want 16 Days of Activism to be a time where the mess of being young or vulnerable is allowed to take up public space. Where we can be angry and inarticulate and still be taken seriously. Not panels. Not slogans. Sound. Poetry. I want a space in which we can express what we need to stay alive and real.”
Uheida, whose first language as a child was Arabic, had to adapt to thinking and writing in English at a tender age. She has described herself as “stuck between synonyms and sentences, suspended between two countries.” Yet, one is struck by the ease and fluency of her work.
Another striking example of her ability to find language for difficult emotion is ‘Our Russian Holiday – II’, in which she explores a loving but deeply complicated interaction with her mother. While she is humbled by her mother’s capacity for quiet endurance, she is also staking her claim as a poet, someone who draws on the entire range of experience to describe what is happening:
“… a daughter shall hoard everything –
memory, mistake, miracle, and word –
this is how we heal our mothers.”
“I write toward what I don’t understand – and that includes my mother. Her silences, her strength, her lineage of endurance. In the face of such things, I don’t know if healing always means resolution. Sometimes healing is just finding words for the pain that came before you. But at least poetry lets me ask the questions I can’t ask out loud.”
How does it feel to launch a collection of poems so fearless and close to the bone?
“It has felt like offering something fragile with both hands. I didn’t expect the response to be so intimate. People don’t just read the poems; they bring their own lives into them. I’ve received words from strangers who recognise their own mothers, their own exile, their own unsayable ache in these pages. That’s been tender. I wrote alone, but the book is not alone anymore.”
In the coming days, write a poem in which you describe a younger, more vulnerable version of you. What words of power and protection would you like to offer this young person?
The 2026 AVBOB Poetry Competition closes its doors at midnight on 30 November 2025. Visit www.avbobpoetry.co.za today and enter your best poems.
But what does it mean to observe such a time imaginatively?
Sarah Uheida is a multi-award-winning young poet and essayist born in Libya, who escaped the Civil War there with her family and moved to South Africa at the age of 13. Her stunning debut poetry collection, Not This Tender (Dryad Press, 2025) was published recently. In it, she chronicles many challenges that would be recognisable to South African women and children, such as access to primary healthcare and the threat of sudden as well as slow, structural violence. Her own journey of loss and migration has allowed her to create what she calls a “grammar of absence”, a body of work that laments and rejoices at the same time.
We asked her how she would like 16 Days of Activism to be celebrated more creatively and consciously in the future.
“I think this time should truly belong to women and children. We don’t need others to speak on our behalf – we need space to say the thing in our own language, even if it’s raw, unfinished, contradictory. I want 16 Days of Activism to be a time where the mess of being young or vulnerable is allowed to take up public space. Where we can be angry and inarticulate and still be taken seriously. Not panels. Not slogans. Sound. Poetry. I want a space in which we can express what we need to stay alive and real.”
Uheida, whose first language as a child was Arabic, had to adapt to thinking and writing in English at a tender age. She has described herself as “stuck between synonyms and sentences, suspended between two countries.” Yet, one is struck by the ease and fluency of her work.
Another striking example of her ability to find language for difficult emotion is ‘Our Russian Holiday – II’, in which she explores a loving but deeply complicated interaction with her mother. While she is humbled by her mother’s capacity for quiet endurance, she is also staking her claim as a poet, someone who draws on the entire range of experience to describe what is happening:
“… a daughter shall hoard everything –
memory, mistake, miracle, and word –
this is how we heal our mothers.”
“I write toward what I don’t understand – and that includes my mother. Her silences, her strength, her lineage of endurance. In the face of such things, I don’t know if healing always means resolution. Sometimes healing is just finding words for the pain that came before you. But at least poetry lets me ask the questions I can’t ask out loud.”
How does it feel to launch a collection of poems so fearless and close to the bone?
“It has felt like offering something fragile with both hands. I didn’t expect the response to be so intimate. People don’t just read the poems; they bring their own lives into them. I’ve received words from strangers who recognise their own mothers, their own exile, their own unsayable ache in these pages. That’s been tender. I wrote alone, but the book is not alone anymore.”
In the coming days, write a poem in which you describe a younger, more vulnerable version of you. What words of power and protection would you like to offer this young person?
The 2026 AVBOB Poetry Competition closes its doors at midnight on 30 November 2025. Visit www.avbobpoetry.co.za today and enter your best poems.
