“There is a long list of things I wish this life

had and hadn’t given me.

But now that I am here,

Having lived with and without,

I know life was only preparing me for myself

And I was worth the wait.”

-Upile Chisala

Upile Chisala is a healer. Her medicine? Language. The Malawian storyteller has a talent for making salve for life’s wounds out of words. This is demonstrated by her 60,000 followers on Instagram and the popularity of her 3 book collection, “Soft Magic” (2015), “Nectar” (2017), and “A Fire Like You” (2020) - each written on a different continent.

When I catch up with Chisala she is at home in Johannesburg and about to babysit her nephew. As someone who has travelled and lived in many places, family, she shares, is a central part of what grounds her. 

“Home is really in the people. Home isn't my WhatsApp groups, my sisters and my brother. Home isn't really a place as of yet. It's more so being with my partner and being with my family members,” she tells me. In her family she is known as the person with the best gist - always ready to tell a tale or two at a gathering. Storytelling has long been an intimate ritual of bridging the gap between her inner and outer world. Growing up, Chisala used to speak to herself a lot and create characters that would live out different stories.

“I used to write short stories as a child and was always attempting to write a novel,” Chisala says. Poetry came later for her, through the route that many young creatives' enter into the digital community: Tumblr. In her early undergraduate years in New Mexico, she began sharing stories online and after coming across Pablo Neruda in the local library, tried her hand at poetry. “In high school, I always felt like poetry had to be deep and have all this intellectualization behind it, like super complex - something that is not accessible at all and when I started reading Pablo Neruda and freeform poetry, I started exploring tempo. People would share these three lines and share five lines and that's the whole point. It's a complete story in and of itself. I decided to start trying to write and share stories that way, because I never really finished novels. I never really finished any of my short stories so I needed something concise, something that gets right to the point and gets right to the heart of the matter. And that's how I found poetry,” she continues.

Despite the negative connotations that often accompany the term ‘Instagram poet’, Chisala embraces the craftiness behind using social media to share a message more widely. “I don't think that it's less serious because it's online. When I think about my work, I think if I've touched someone at work, if there was one person or two people on any level saying ‘it helped me in x way’ then it's done,” she says.

Chisala’s writing also extends to her practice as an academic. After receiving a Master’s in medical anthropology at Oxford, she now works as a researcher at her alma mater and University of Cape Town where she looks into narrative medicine and reproductive health. “So, basically how you can create interventions with youth, adolescents in Africa, using an intervention that has storytelling at the centre of it? So, how can you incorporate storytelling more and more into creating interventions that actually change children's lives and on the African continent... 

...To be able to, for example, if it's a health care or health intervention, is it something that changes your mind about engaging in unsafe sex?” she tells me.

This is my first time hearing the terms ‘storytelling therapy’ and ‘narrative medicine’ but it is clear that Chisala prioritizes the healing properties of her work. Writing, she explains, has saved her life many times. In navigating depression and mental health challenges, putting words to her feelings helps her achieve peace. This catharsis is one she also seeks to cultivate for others with her writer mentorship program, Khala, meaning to ‘sit down’ in Chichewa. Asides from holding workshops and retreats, Chisala is also working on an anthology of poems by unpublished poets showing that to her, writing, and listening to others go hand in hand.

Formerly a self-published author herself, now that she is represented by Folio Literary Management she has more time to focus on building community, family life, and her writing. “I don't have to be the one who's constantly begging bookstores to house my books or having to figure out how my book is gonna get to Malaysia or Australia or wherever else...That was exhausting but the experience of writing and performing poetry has always kind of been fun,” she says.

What’s next for Upile Chisala? Exploring storytelling in even more mediums. “I also understand how poetry and art and novels and movies...everything works in tandem together. Lately, I've been working with art galleries in Johannesburg that have showcased my work, which is something that I had never dreamt of doing. I never thought that was possible but now I realize that all these things are really connected to having a joyful life. So these things truly speak to each other. For me, I love interior design. I love making spaces beautiful and calming. I love collecting, I'm also really on this journey of collecting art, particularly from African people or people of African origin. I think it all just works in tandem together. Things really, really speak to each other more deeply than you think but to my core, I think that I am a creative and a storyteller so it's so broad. There's so many things that you don't realize you can actually participate in.”

 I for one, look forward to having the opportunity to hang such thoughtfully conjured words on my walls one day. Upile continues to demonstrate how vulnerability is not only a strength, but a superpower and her art reminds us of this.

Upile Chisala will be appearing in AMAKA Books on Instagram Live on Thursday, 27th May, 6pm GMT. Don't miss it!