The Big Debate: Traditional vs self-publishing
April 28, 2017Maureen and her cats
April 28, 2017Nomme 20 Delphistraat
Shirmoney Rhode, author of Nomme 20 Delphistraat, writes about her small beginnings and inspiration, and finding her voice as a young writer from the Cape Flats.
Small beginnings
I started writing at a very young age. My writing wasn’t necessarily creative writing. I wrote everything down. New interesting words I learnt, things that I felt, saw and heard. Essays on things that I believed. I wrote my first poem Let me live when I was in Grade 7 as part of a speech I had to deliver at our prize-giving evening.
Thereafter, I started experimenting with poetry. At first I wrote on topics such as love, dreams and all the other things teenagers often write about.
Later I realised that my voice, the voice of a young, coloured girl on the Cape Flats, is nowhere represented in the books I often take out from the library. I knew I had to start writing about the things I see around me. I knew that I had to start writing honestly about the things life challenged me with. The death of my 19-year-old brother, who was found dead on 26 September 2006. Gangsterism. Drug abuse.