Les transgressions poétiques d’un auteur swahiliphone de Lubumbashi : Patrick Mudekereza

This paper reports on field research carried out as part of a Project of National Interest (PRIN)
entitled “Mobility - Stabilisation. Congolese representations and social dynamics, in Congo and in
the global space”, funded for the period 2017-2020 by the Italian Ministry of Education,
University and Research. Flavia Aiello and Roberto Gaudioso present unpublished texts by
Patrick Mudekereza whom they met in Lubumbashi in 2018. Mudekereza never published his
poems in poetry collections, considering his writing essentially as a practice associated with his
work dedicated to art. Engaged in several forms of writing, both creative and discursive (the
latter in French or English), the artist from Lubumbashi seems to have a very particular and
intimate relationship with poetry, which he practises intermittently and of which he does not
keep track systematically. In this article we will analyse six texts, three of which (Funga macho
liya, Pima tuyambe and Langues) were composed during the work of the writers’ collective
Libr’Écrire born in Lubumbashi in 2007; two are undated (Buzuri tele and Mu pori ya binvuri [In the
Wood of Shadows]), and one (Mankamanshi>Mboleo [Snot>Fertilising]) is dated 13 February 2018.
Three of these poetic compositions are bi/multilingual, in French, Swahili and Lingala (Funga
macho liya, Langues, Mankamanshi>Mboleo), the others are written in Swahili.