Zoe Bok Image: SuppliedZoe Bok is adamant. “I’m not a poet!”
Nevertheless, she took centre stage in Johannesburg, at the recently held 2025 Siyaphumelela Student Success Network Conference, and read her poem, “I am” to conference participants, where she was selected as one of the five finalists in the Dream Scholars Programme.
In her sixth year at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), the Social Work Master’s student said she was thrown into the deep end and challenged to write poetry when she was chosen to be part of the Siyaphumelela experience. In addition to her studies, Bok, 23, is also a First-Year Transitioning Officer at UWC, helping first-year students to make the leap from high school to the rigours of university life.
“I was privileged to experience the power of poetry, but I didn’t do it alone. We were assisted by Ms Diana Ferrus and Anna Samuel, who helped us through the process of creating our poems,” said Bok.
“I had to write up my first draft and then send it through to her (Ferrus), we had one-on-one sessions, we had online sessions with other scholars where we had to present our poetry and at each session were just chipping away, figuring it out and ultimately getting to what we ended up with.”
She described drafting her poem as “very emotional, very vulnerable” because it demanded introspection about her lived experiences. From being born in Mpumalanga, to the divorce of her parents at the age of six, having lived in five provinces and attending both private and public schools.
“For the first half of the poem, we were challenged to talk about our struggles, our difficulties, and then the second half of the poem was about liberation and how we came through these struggles, and so we really had to reflect, and look back at life. But reflection for me is not really an issue,” said Bok.
As a social work student, she said she was constantly encouraged to reflect, and although the process of drafting her poem was not easy, she said the experience was liberating.
“I've had to adapt quickly. I've had to figure things out alone. I've had to prove myself over and over and over, and it was emotionally exhausting, and sometimes lonely, but what these experiences have given me was how to read a room, how to listen with depth, how to lead with empathy, and it's given me perspective, though I didn't know it then. So it was all part of the plan of who I am,” said Bok.
The winner of the poetry competition is yet to be announced and will fly off to the United States, where they will read the winning poem at the DREAM Summit in March 2026, which will be hosted in Portland, Oregon.
In the first year of her Master's, Bok’s research focuses on play therapy through a social work lens.
“I have a great love for children, and that’s the direction I intend to go when I go into the working field, whatever that may be. I would love to work with children,” said Bok.
Think Not!
By Zoe Bok
You are hearing my breath,
The breath of slave, native, labourer and immigrant,
The breath of Andre Bok and Ursula Reid
Mpumalanga’s misty dawns cradling my first breath,
this breath, continues from East London’s dusty mornings,
Upington’s sunburnt afternoons and Johannesburg’s restless nights.
Cape Town’s windswept promise,
Graaff-Reinet’s quiet streets echoing with old stories,
Atlantis’ tense corners where sirens wail
gulped my breath with the grip of gangsterism.
There were days in Belhar when the loneliness
And the fear-factor of being female smothered,
pounded my heart walking home through streets
menaced with shadows and whispered threats.
A mosaic of places; each one a piece of home.
I choked in the tides of my father’s careers and undertow of divorce,
The silent quilt of feeling responsible for our house of conflicts,
becoming a child between two homes, a pendulum between having and poverty.
I exhaled in the ache of being the outsider in my father’s house,
my family a suitcase; packed and unpacked by hope and hardship,
my family a patchwork of my stepmother, stepsisters, half-siblings
and the silent spaces left by separation.
When I finally lived with my mother; a mother I barely knew,
a new beginning laced with old wounds,
a family learning to fit together,
healing and hurt in equal measure.
The “new girl” in every classroom,
My name a seed in unfamiliar soil,
each school a maze of faces and customs
never quite belonging, never quite seen.
Each new school a lesson in letting go,
each goodbye a silent grief,
each ache a friendship left behind
Who was I across so many places and faces?
How can I measure myself when standards shifted like sand?
Why was the warmth of true belonging
only to be glimpsed from a distance?
So, I wore a mask, but underneath this mask I carried resilience!
My academic record would NOT be lost in translation!
So, I breathed. Yes, I breathed my breaths,
my academic prowess would NOT be lost in translation!
I carried the weight of financial worry,
tuition and rent like stones in my backpack,
NSFAS, a lifeline but never enough to ease the burden
Each rand a reminder of sacrifice.
But then, at UWC,
where the walls remember the struggle,
where the soil is rich with footsteps of those
who fought for freedom with books and bare hands.
There I understood: Education is the most powerful
weapon which you can use to change the world
Mandela’s words resonated deep within my heart,
and I began to believe that my story too, could change.
At UWC I inhaled the oxygen of philosopher Mohlomi:
Moste ha o na sehlare; sehlare ke pelo!
Power does not lie in medicine: power lies in the heart!
Yes, so I made it.
You hear me breathing.
Carried by the breath of native, slave, labourer and immigrant
The breath of the daughter of Andre Bok and Ursula Reid.
Ek is nie n slagoffer van my omstandighede nie,
maar die argitek van my eie toekoms,
my heart a compose that points to hope,
my voice a drumbeat that calls others to rise.
Motho Ke Motho Ka Batho Ba Bang,
I am because we are.
I praise every hand that lifted me,
every voice that called my name in the darkness.
My story woven into the tapestry of liberation
Hier het ek besef:
Ek is deel van iets groter,
en ek dra die drome van my familie, my gemeenskap, my land.
Every step forward was a chorus of encouragement,
every stumble a lesson in humility,
every victory a testament to the village that raised me.
I am because we are.
Not victims of circumstance,
but witnesses to the power of community,
a living metaphor for hope.
A testament that the storm may shape the tree,
But it is the air, the clean lovely air
Brought by the sun, and the rain, and the forest
the ancestral breath that helps it reach for the sky.
Therefore, let the world know,
I am not what happened to me
I am what I choose to become
I am because we are
Rooted in the soil of shared struggle,
blossoming in the light of collective triumph.
Despite it all, I made it
Victim of circumstance? I think not!
I breath. Moya, my soul.
Yes, I breath, oh so very freely.
