Toni Stuart is a South African poet, performer and spoken-word educator from Athlone in Cape Town. Stuart’s work embarks on the earnest journey of hurting, healing, and releasing ancestral trauma while embracing our ancestral gifts.
Before becoming a full-time poet, Toni Stuart worked as a journalist in Cape Town. “Because I worked in community newspapers, I was often working in the communities I grew up in. I was going to people’s homes and they were sharing their stories with me. And I always felt this sense of great privilege at how much people will share with you,” says Stuart. PHOTO: Supplied/Nadine Christians
Toni Stuart has always known that she wanted to be a poet. But the year was 2002 and, with no actual information on how to become a poet, she studied journalism instead.
“I went into journalism in matric because I knew I wanted to be a poet. But I didn’t know how to be a poet, so my question was: ‘What job will make me write and make money?’ And journalism is what came.”
A bright-eyed Toni joined the journalism class at what was then known as Peninsula Technikon (now the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, or CPUT). Thanks to, as Toni calls it, how life’s “magic unfolds”, she ended up working at Cape Community Newspapers, where she was joined by another colleague. To Stuart’s luck, this colleague happened to be a poet.
“Then I got into the newsroom at 19, my team leader said: ‘Stick to this colleague and they will show you the ropes. And the way that they do things is good. So stick with them.’”
This particular colleague was not only a poet but had started a record label with her boyfriend, explains Stuart. “I started working with them and organising gigs together. I was being a poet, being a performer, even alongside being a journalist.”
She went on to pursue her masters in writing/teaching at Goldsmiths, the University of London, in 2015, attending as a Chevenning Scholar. Stuart describes this as the “line in the sand” regarding her future as a full-time poet and creative.
“I’ve been kind of working for two and a half years as a poet, but mainly doing work in curation. And then, once I started my masters, I told myself that from here on I would focus on myself.”
During her time at Goldsmith, Stuart developed what is now one of her most popular and acclaimed works, Krotoa-Eva’s Suite – a cape jazz poem in three movements. The piece is an unpublished poetry collection, written for her masters dissertation in 2015. It has since been taught locally at university level.
During her time at Goldsmith, Toni Stuart developed what is now one of her most popular and acclaimed works, Krotoa-Eva’s Suite – a cape jazz poem in three movements. The piece is an unpublished poetry collection, written for her masters dissertation in 2015. It tells the story of Krotoa Eva, a Khoi woman who served as an interpreter to Dutch colonists at the Cape. VIDEO: Toni Stuart
According to Stuart, her work touches on heavy and difficult content, such as the effects of ancestral trauma, healing the body and mind, and embracing the natural gifts passed down by our ancestors.
Dr Nadia Davids, associate professor with the English Studies department at the University of Cape Town and president of PEN South Africa, calls Stuart’s work “beautiful, detailed, textured, arresting, mesmerising, aesthetically innovative and historically ground-breaking”.
“[Stuart] invites her readers and listeners to consider not just what the South African archives of the enslaved are, but what they can be,” says Davids. “Her work, like all work concerned with history, is very much about the present – about working to uncover truths of the past to make sense of the now.”
Dr Nadia Davids, associate professor with the English Studies department at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and president of PEN South Africa, calls Toni Stuart’s work “beautiful, detailed, textured, arresting, mesmerising, aesthetically innovative and historically ground-breaking”. Davids has previously taught Stuart’s poem, Krotoa-Eva’s Suite – a cape jazz poem in three movements, to English undergraduates at UCT. PHOTO: Supplied/Lindsey Appolis
Moving forward gently
On the emotional weight of the content and context of her work, Stuart says that she feels everything that is asking to be felt. “The thing about the work is that, in order to heal, we have to feel,” she says.
Stuart places a great emphasis on the fact that the younger generation should not feel the burden of pain for our ancestors but rather that it is their duty to release this history. She tries to channel this through her work.
“It is that our work is not to carry our ancestors’ pain. And partly what happens is that we get stuck in thinking that it is our role to carry it. But it is our role to feel it and let it go,” she says. “If we stay in the pain and the anger, then we are not shifting anything and we are not supporting our (ancestral and generational) line. Because what we heal in us, we heal in everyone behind us and everyone after us.”
On nature and nurturing
Stuart’s connection with nature had been influenced by her personal growth. “I remember […] I was writing in this writers’ group and I was writing about the sun and the moon and I never used a definite article. I always said ‘sun’ and ‘moon’. And the person who was an editor and publisher said that you have to put ‘the’ in. And I said no I don’t and I couldn’t explain why.”
“But in the last two years of ancestral healing and connection and […] restoring my ancestral relationship with the land, I understand why – because some part of me knew that that was a way of disconnecting from the earth,” explained Stuart.
“Whereas sun and moon are living entities and siblings […] it’s almost that innate way that we all have of being with the earth. It was being with Mother earth, and the distancing that we have inherited through religion.”
Toni Stuart is a South African poet, performer and spoken-word educator from Athlone, Cape Town. Stuart focuses on doing the inner work required to heal ancestral trauma and celebrating our ancestral gifts. PHOTO: Supplied/Dylan Valley
Coming home to oneself
Stuart’s journey had been a long-winding one of self-discovery and bringing oneself home towards oneself. She advises people who hope to do the same, to start within themselves.
“The reason I say this is because, looking back at my life, there were so many projects and things that I did and thought ‘ah, this is what the community needs […]’ But when I actually go deeper, I realise that that was a need that I didn’t know I had,” explained Stuart.
“It starts by asking, ‘What is the thing that I’m struggling with and how does that live in me?’”
Stuart emphasises the need to ask for help and the importance of building community in this process of healing. “What we heal in ourselves, we heal in the world. The world is people and when you heal, you shift things.”
Stuart ends by saying that she hopes that as people start their journey of self-discovery and healing, and as they grow more aware of themselves, Stuart would want people to always be reminded that “[w]e are more beautiful and more capable and more wise and more knowledgeable than we’ve ever allowed ourselves to see”.
“The only thing stopping us from achieving our dreams of freedom and prosperity are our own inability to see our greatness – the deep ancestral gifts, wisdoms and knowledge that lives within us.”