Mangaliso Buzani grew up in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, and later trained as a jeweller in Tshwane. His first collection Ndisabhala Imibongo (Imbizo, 2014) written in isiXhosa, won the 2015 SALA award for poetry. The title poem of this book, his first collection in English, won the Dalro Prize for the best poem published in New Coin in 2014. Buzani teaches poetry in English and isiXhosa in the MA in Creative Writing at Rhodes University. Using simple vocabulary a naked bone describes complex states of beauty and suffering, many of them at the borderline where life meets death. In dreamlike rhythms and images, Buzani’s poems draw from Xhosa culture, Christianity, and elements of nature. They are love poems in the widest sense, embracing the interface of daily life and the spiritual, expressing joy and compassion in the face of deprivation and mourning.