Blog
Intimacies of the everyday | Pralini Naidoo
11 days ago
For thousands of years, poets have turned to the natural world for comfort, inspiration and companionship.
As we prepare to celebrate World Oceans Day on 8 June, The AVBOB Poetry Project is featuring the work and voice of Pralini Naidoo, poet, storyteller and writing facilitator. Her debut collection of poems, reflections and stories, Wild has Roots (Poetree Publications, 2022) contains beautiful poems exploring her layered, healing relationship with the sea.
“I call it an elaborate love story, inspired by intimacies of the everyday,” Naidoo says about the anthology, which contains material dedicated to her father as well as to romantic lovers and friends, unheard women who look like her, celestial bodies and bodies of water, mountains and ancestors.
The book was put together during the COVID pandemic, at a time when she had just lost her father. But while many of the poems and stories are touched by grief, there is a spirit of irreverence and playfulness at work throughout.
“Reverence has seldom been about temples or churches for me. Reverence is deeply erotic and vibrant – and everyday. To be awed, grief-stricken, touched by this human experience is reverent. To fall apart laughing in the midst of unbearable pain is reverent. Playing and praying are very similar.”
In one striking poem, ‘South Beach’, she seamlessly combines these elements while listing the people she encounters on an early morning walk along a favourite stretch of Indian Ocean coast, each with a particular relationship to the sea. The poem registers treasure hunters and tourists, fishermen and congregants living in “the deep faith of salt water.” But it ends in a declaration of her own love for the ocean on its own terms:
“I love it that ‘South Beach’ feels so deeply accessible to just about anyone,” Naidoo says, “whether you’re a surfer, a congregant waiting to be baptised, a seine netter or a swimmer. There is a collective sense of appreciation for the coming of a new day as the sun emerges from the watery horizon.”
At the same time, other poems reveal her deep awareness of other, more painful historic associations with the ocean.
“The harbour mouth at South Beach would have been welcomed by my indentured ancestors in South Africa. So the poem is in some ways an origin story, difficult but also historically significant. Perhaps it is this searching for the gaps, the stories that I do not find in history books, that has consistently lured me to South Beach.”
What does it mean to her to celebrate World Oceans Day?
“I spent many years being afraid of the ocean. I attribute some of this fear to the passage of my ancestors from India to South Africa under less than humane circumstances. I still hold healthy respect for the ocean, but over the years I have realised that she is a part of me and that by deepening my relationship to her, I was healing and breaking a generational cycle, and remembering an ancient way of being. So I wish there wasn’t just one day to be concerned about the ocean. I believe she sends me messages in my dreams, often messages of warning. For us, more than for her. Writing poems is my way of bringing these messages into the world.”
In the next few days, write a poem that engages with a body of water, a river or a mountain close to you. It can be a poem full of wonder, or it can explore an element of your family history.
The annual AVBOB Poetry Competition opens on 1 August 2026 and offers a cash prize of R10 000 in each language category. Visit www.avbobpoetry.co.za for details on how to participate.
As we prepare to celebrate World Oceans Day on 8 June, The AVBOB Poetry Project is featuring the work and voice of Pralini Naidoo, poet, storyteller and writing facilitator. Her debut collection of poems, reflections and stories, Wild has Roots (Poetree Publications, 2022) contains beautiful poems exploring her layered, healing relationship with the sea.
“I call it an elaborate love story, inspired by intimacies of the everyday,” Naidoo says about the anthology, which contains material dedicated to her father as well as to romantic lovers and friends, unheard women who look like her, celestial bodies and bodies of water, mountains and ancestors.
The book was put together during the COVID pandemic, at a time when she had just lost her father. But while many of the poems and stories are touched by grief, there is a spirit of irreverence and playfulness at work throughout.
“Reverence has seldom been about temples or churches for me. Reverence is deeply erotic and vibrant – and everyday. To be awed, grief-stricken, touched by this human experience is reverent. To fall apart laughing in the midst of unbearable pain is reverent. Playing and praying are very similar.”
In one striking poem, ‘South Beach’, she seamlessly combines these elements while listing the people she encounters on an early morning walk along a favourite stretch of Indian Ocean coast, each with a particular relationship to the sea. The poem registers treasure hunters and tourists, fishermen and congregants living in “the deep faith of salt water.” But it ends in a declaration of her own love for the ocean on its own terms:
alone
I walk
embodied within
the rituals
of a saturday morning ocean
I walk
embodied within
the rituals
of a saturday morning ocean
“I love it that ‘South Beach’ feels so deeply accessible to just about anyone,” Naidoo says, “whether you’re a surfer, a congregant waiting to be baptised, a seine netter or a swimmer. There is a collective sense of appreciation for the coming of a new day as the sun emerges from the watery horizon.”
At the same time, other poems reveal her deep awareness of other, more painful historic associations with the ocean.
“The harbour mouth at South Beach would have been welcomed by my indentured ancestors in South Africa. So the poem is in some ways an origin story, difficult but also historically significant. Perhaps it is this searching for the gaps, the stories that I do not find in history books, that has consistently lured me to South Beach.”
What does it mean to her to celebrate World Oceans Day?
“I spent many years being afraid of the ocean. I attribute some of this fear to the passage of my ancestors from India to South Africa under less than humane circumstances. I still hold healthy respect for the ocean, but over the years I have realised that she is a part of me and that by deepening my relationship to her, I was healing and breaking a generational cycle, and remembering an ancient way of being. So I wish there wasn’t just one day to be concerned about the ocean. I believe she sends me messages in my dreams, often messages of warning. For us, more than for her. Writing poems is my way of bringing these messages into the world.”
In the next few days, write a poem that engages with a body of water, a river or a mountain close to you. It can be a poem full of wonder, or it can explore an element of your family history.
The annual AVBOB Poetry Competition opens on 1 August 2026 and offers a cash prize of R10 000 in each language category. Visit www.avbobpoetry.co.za for details on how to participate.
