“Born to flames
Conceived in between rows
reared to spark riots
and fled the norm”

These are the lines from a 30-year-old Free State’s spoken-word activist and poet, Serame Makhele popularly known as Icebound. He uses these words extracted from a piece called Poet’s protest to introduce himself, in a nutshell, to audiences. Icebound draws his inspiration from countless Pan-African writers that he studied and read as a youngster and continues to explore.

His unique style of performance which he termed Rhyme and Reason, Rhythm and Content, illustrates a perfect incorporation of rap and ragga into classical African poetry and literature. Icebound prefers mainly to write and perform about hardcore socio-politico and economic issues. This can be proven by words quoted from his controversial piece titled Burn dem up and destroy dem:

Capitalism and fascism
Modern-day Nazism and imperialism
We use spoken-word as a mechanism
To burn them up and destroy them