Sihle Ntuli

Sihle Ntuli is a South African poet, editor and curator born and living in Durban, South Africa. His writing has been supported through fellowships and residencies by the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies in South Africa, The Centre for Stories in Australia, The Caselberg Trust in collaboration with the Dunedin UNESCO city of Literature in New Zealand and Literaturhaus Wien in Austria. He is a 2024 Best of the Net winner and the winner of the 2024/2025 Diann Blakely Poetry Competition. His most recent release is the poetry collection Owele (2025) published by uHlanga

When I think of radiance, I think of fire. And here, we choose—provocatively—to overlook the myth of Prometheus, with its infamous theft and divine punishment. Instead, we turn to the Kuba people of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who offer a rare myth of co-operation between gods and mortals. After the goddess Tsetse is expelled for her chaotic tendency to set things ablaze, fire disappears from the world. It is Bumba who then teaches humans how to harness it, revealing its source in the trees. This myth invites us to ask: where do we, as poets, harness our own fire? How do we keep it alive? What does it mean to be radiant?