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The Badilisha Poetry X-Change 2009 calendar of poetry exchanges and collaborations continues with a weekend of poetry performances at Spier.

Taking place at Spier’s beautiful and intimate Boma by the river, the local and international poets will weave their words into the night from 7:30pm on 27 and 28 November 2009.

About the poets

American performance poet and multi-instrumentalist, Ngoma Hill, shifts paradigms with work focusing on culture as a tool for socio-political consciousness. Having worked with Allen Ginsberg and Amiri Baraka, his credentials show that this critically-acclaimed artist packs a punch with his words and sound.

Dubbed a ‘Brit-born Bajan international’ by Caribbean literary icon, Kamau Braithwaite, Dorothea Smartt, is a poet and live artist who merges standard and Caribbean English through poetic form, speech rhythms, myth, history, observation and reflection.

2007 Poetry Slam Champion Warsan Shire is a London-based, Somali poet who uses her words as a conduit for the messages of the marginalised and misunderstood. Warsan has performed extensively in the UK and North America to rave reviews. This is her first appearance in Cape Town.

Prolific and provocative South African wordsmith and filmmaker, Aryan Kaganof, features in the eclectic African Noise Foundation, together with Zim Ngqawana - a composer in the Blue Note tradition, Mantombi Matotiyana (one of the last living traditional exponents of the Uhadi instrument), Warrick Sony (Kalahari Surfer) on acoustic instruments, and isiXhosa vocal improviser David Mayekane.

Badilisha Poetry Xchange Workshops

The local and international poets participating in The Badilisha Poetry X-Change will conduct a series of workshops and discussions during the week leading up to the performance weekend.

Discussions deal with a range of topics, including Poetry in Urban Spaces (presented by Ntone Edjabe in partnership with the Africa Centre for Cities), a discussion on issues facing refugee communities with Warsan Shire at the Scalibrini Centre for Refugees as well as a poetry in process dialogue with Dorothea Smartt, hosted by the UWC English Department.

The workshops focus on the intensification of poetry-writing skills. Ngoma Hill’s workshop focuses on the use of music in performance poetry, encouraging young artists to find original and inventive ways of expressing their own truths. Dorothea Smartt will explore place and environment as a metaphor for creative expression and Aryan Kaganof will work with a small multi-genred focus group.

BADILISHA POETRY X-CHANGE BRINGS CAPE TOWN A JOURNEY OF WORD AND SOUND THIS WINTER

Cape Town, 14 April 2009

A host of local and international poets will converge on Cape Town from 22-25 May 2009, to collaborate, celebrate, express, perform and exchange ideas at the Badilisha Poetry X-Change 2009. This feast of poetic performances will take place at The New Space Two Venue and The Slave Church on Long Street on the evenings of 22nd and 23rd May and, on the 25th May, at The Sacks E. Futeran & Co Building to celebrate Africa Day.

Badilisha (a Kiswahili expression meaning to transform/change/exchange) is presented by the Africa Centre. The curators, Malika Ndlovu and Lorelle Viegi, comment, “Badilisha 2009 is a powerful collection of voices in a space that has been deliberately created to nurture multi-layered authentic exchange. We invite people to savor the delicious digest of word, sound and charismatic delivery that is poetry.”

The 2009 Badilisha Poetry X-Change programme will deliver the poetic in spoken, sung and screened form, with poets representing South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, DRC, USA, UK and Sri Lanka.

Local highlights include Cape Town’s Emile Jansen of Black Noise-fame, the acclaimed Megan Hall, new Afrikaans talent Loftus Marais and the exciting young duo of Kai Lossgott and Mbali Vilakazi in a multi-media piece entitled enough. From Gauteng, comes performance artist Philippa Yaa de Villiers and well known author and media personality Eric Miyeni. Other notable South African voices are iBushwomen (the sister collective of Tereska Muishond and Laverne da Silva from the Free State), who explore the indigenous cadences of the San and Khoi people, isiXhosa imbongi Jessica Mbangeni from the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal father-daughter collaboration Ntokozo and Bhekimpi Madlala in a production titled Khumbula Amagugu (Remembering Precious Things).

Poets from other parts of the world will include Nigerian writer/essayist, Uche Nduka and Zimbabwean activist poet Michael Mabwe that is in dialogue with the Cape Town-based Zimbabwean poet Annie Moyo in Bullet Words. The poignant, multi-lingual SA/Mauritius/DRC collaboration Berceuse (Lullaby) features Tania van Schalkwyk, Jamala Safari and Mwila Mabwe. Hugely popular UK poet Lemn Sissay, brings his inimitable irony to the platform and from the USA comes the invigorating performance of word-artist, Tantra-Zawadi. Another noteworthy visitor is Seni Seneviratne; a widely-regarded performance artist of English and Sri Lankan descent. Added to this scintillating mix are the musical talents of Shannon Mowday and Thandi Swartbooi, who collaborate with the poets in their festival performances.

The Badilisha Poetry X-Change programme consists of a multi-layered presentation of performances featured back-to-back on the evenings of 22 and 23 May, with a 25 minute interval, during which audiences can purchase books and CDs at The Book Lounge stall in the Africa Centre Gallery on 1st Floor, 44 Long Street. The independent urban oral history film project, City Breath, a collection of short video ‘breaths’, will also be screened during the interval at this venue.

Badilisha Poetry X-Change has also chosen to mark Africa Day on 25 May 2009, with a lunchtime gathering of this Badilisha Poetry X-change Festival’s poets who will explore the multiple trajectories and origins of African Cities. The event will also serve as a platform for the launch of an online reader entitled Pan African Practices (a collaboration of the African Centre for Cities and Chimurenga Magazine), a virtual space where African’s can define their African identity. This event is free and open to the public.

Tickets to the Badilisha Poetry X-Change evenings are R60 and are available through Computicket. For additional information please contact Felicia at The Africa Centre on 021 422 0468 feliciapb@africacentre.net or visit www.africacentre.net/badilisha

On Wednesday, 15 April, acclaimed poet Malika Ndlovu will be here to launch Invisible Earthquake: A woman’s journal through stillbirth, her autobiographical cycle of poems about her own experience of stillbirth.

Date & Time: Wednesday, 15 April at 5:30 for 6:00

the Book Lounge
71 Roeland st
Cape Town
Tel: 021 462 2425
booklounge@gmail.com

Invisible Earthquake has been a long time incubating, but now she’s finally here….

Malika Ndlovu has written a book in which she shares her journeying through the grief of losing her third baby, a girl, Iman Bongiwe, to stillbirth. The reader is allowed to enter the intimate dark space that a grief stricken mother goes into as she tries to come to terms with her loss. Stillbirth, like miscarriage, statistically happens much more frequently than is widely known, and yet it has not been written about much in literature. It is something women are asked to get over without much ado or attention paid to their grief. Malika bravely pays attention to her experience through writing and thus opens up a space for others who have experienced similar losses to be mirrored in their grief, to have their anguish acknowledged.

Invisible Earthquake - a mother’s journal through stillbirth - is framed with an essay by Sue Fawcus, a specialist obstetrician at a public maternity hospital who writes of stillbirth from a medical perspective, she writes of statistics, causes, and of her experience as a medical practitioner in dealing with stillbirth and neo-natal death. Two social workers from the same hospital, Muriel Johnstone and Zubeida Bassadien, write about how they accompany women who grieve for their babies.

The book also contains a resource list of books and helpful organisations. Colleen Crawford Cousins is the cover artist as well as the co-editor with me, and Hannah Morris did the hand-lettering on the cover. Charley Pollard took the photograph of Malika that appears in the book. Making the book has been a collaborative effort. Enormous thanks are due to all who contributed to the book.

Colleen Higgs
Modjaji Books
cell: 0727743546
tel: 0216965503
fax: 0865179066
http://modjaji.book.co.za

LAUNCHES

Invisible Earthquake will be launch in Cape Town at

Kalk Bay Books

Time: 16h00
Date: Saturday 14th March, 2009

Book Lounge, in Roeland Street

Time: 18h00
Date: Wed 15th April 2009

Whenever I have witnessed the dread in a mother’s eyes suddenly turning cold, on hearing that their baby has died, I have had to curb the urge to run away. This intensely personal and powerful journal that Malika has brought to us should become an essential adjunct to any journey that begins with that moment of sharing a baby’s death. Not only does her writing elicit the full range of human emotion, but the additional resource section makes this book extremely relevant, especially to South African women.

Dr Carol Thomas, Specialist Obstetrician Gynaecologist
at theWomanSpace

In the 7 years since my own loss and subsequent ongoing counselling for other bereaved parents, I have never read more explicit and perfect words that describe the gut wrenching feeling that all mothers suffer. This is a must read for all family and friends who want to begin to try and understand the enormity of our desperateness.”

Kim Palmer, The Compassionate Friends: Support Organisation for Grieving Parents

“Malika Ndlovu writes the way she lives. ‘Invisible Earthquake - a woman’s journal through stillbirth’ is filled with abundance - from terrible grief and sorrow to healing and the joy of her son’s words ‘I have a sister’ as he draws her - bigger than the page.You feel Iman Bongiwe’s presence in Malika’s life and poetry. You hear the pain of a mother who rocked her baby in her womb and felt her baby’s heartbeat echo her own. As she gently lowers her white daisy onto the waves of the ocean Malika honours Iman’s journey through life and death. Her poetry and song hold you, her reader as she holds herself. As you hold this book, as you read her words, you feel the pulse and rhythm of your own heart…and of the children who come ‘through you but not from you’

Pregs Govender, SA Human Rights Commissioner & Author of Love & Courage – A Story of Insubordination

“ This work speaks for itself: it whispers, cries, weeps, sings, reaches far for consolation. It invokes and even delicately touches at times the great wings spread over us if we but bother to look. It was a joy (and a sorrow) to read this manuscript with an editorial eye. It is joy alone to watch the formidable talent of Malika Ndlovu unfold. This is a voice our healing nation needs to hear.” Shauna Wescott (Editor and Writer)

“Malika has created a piece of work that gives grief a voice. I know this will bring solace to all those who read it, anyone who has lost any loved one will see themselves in her words.” Joy Mc Pherson (Founder Midwives Inc.)

Praise is due to Malika Ndlovu for having narrated such a powerful story that takes a reader through one of the most painful and profoundly life-changing experience.

Inspired by baby Bongiwe’s passing within her, Malika uses the delicate language of poetry and journaling to invite her audience to bear witness to her deep pain, grief and sorrow.

As I read this manuscript and felt moved by its honesty and immediacy, I couldn’t resist thinking that this is the first time a woman has managed to get to the core of what “inimba” really means without mentioning the word. Inimba represents the seat of our soul that connects us to our ancestors, and at the same time provides a link to future generations. It represents that which makes us truly respond to each other’s pain and suffering and most importantly that which gives us the ability to ‘feel for”.

This is indeed a treasure from a generous heart and soul. Malika not only invites us to bear witness to her journey, but offers all those who have travelled her path a resource to soothe their souls and aide their healing processes. Her offering is both a balm and a well of wisdom that invites fellow sisters, and their supporters to use which will inspire and replenish their weary and flagging souls.

Abaphantsi bathi Camagu sis’wam! The Ancestors Salute you, my dear sister!

Nomfundo Walaza,

Clinical Psychologist & CEO of Desmond Tutu Peace Centre

Malika Ndlovu
New Moon Ventures
“healing through creativity”
Tel: +27( 0)21 448 6877
Fax:+27( 0)866 898989
Cell: +27( 0)83 745 1398

When you finally
And suddenly
Left my womb
My trembling arms
My yearning gaze
I began unconsciously wrapping myself in a second skin
Spinning an invisible crystal thread around myself
I began to adapt to a new living
Slowing down my movement
My breathing
Wanting, some days, to die
Some nights, suspended in a pool of my own tears,
Affi rming that I was still alive
Your dying changed every detail of my living
I could not recognize the eyes in my mirror
Feel the familiarity of my body as it once was
Only an aching awkwardness
An amputation that still had to register.
Even my skin felt too thin.
So began the spinning
Day after day into night into day
Circling myself in a ritual of sorrow
A concentrated circling of the wound
The deep tunnel it seemed you had slipped into
I was determined to follow
And find you
Sometimes my chest grew too heavy
I inhaled smoke instead of air
A secret torture
A silent ritual of remembrance
Expressing my burning
Holding myself in the moment
Not wanting time to move me forward
Or memory to take me back
Only the manageable size of each moment
Each breath was as far as I wanted to step
Soon almost a thousand days will have passed
My spinning long since come to an end
I have been in a cocoon of my own making
Playing alive
Playing dead
Even playing
Somewhere in this shadow pocket
I have reawakened
To my stillness
To my aloneness
A gentle recognition of my separateness
From all this weeping
I have found ways to allow and suppress my tears
Words to explain why I do
Perhaps only discovering parts of myself I never knew
Before you
As this third year closes I sense a fundamental shift
A crack in my shell
Where light has begun streaming in
Warming my new skin
In my heart I am standing on a cliff
Waiting for the wind to carry me
I will not leap or dive
I will not resist when that moment of fl ight arrives
In all this waiting and wishing
Raging and aching
Accepting and denying
I have developed a comfort in the dark
A hunger for the dawn
In my bones I know
I have grown wings

Modjaji Books and Kalk Bay Books are proud to invite you to the launch of Malika Ndlovu’s new book, Invisible Earthquake - a mother’s journal through stillbirth.

Ndlovu takes us right into the heart of her grief, she allows us into her secret, dark place of the terrible loss of her third child who was stillborn. The book speaks into the silence around this issue. Like miscarriage, stillbirth is something women are supposed to get over and move on with. Invisible Earthquake is placed in the wider South African context by Sue Fawcus, in which she writes tenderly and expertly about stillbirth from the point of view of a medical practitioner, a specialist obstetrician.

We look forward to welcoming you at the event.

Event Details

* Date: Saturday, 14 March 2009
* Time: 3:30 PM for 4:00 PM
* Venue: Kalk Bay Books, 124 Main Road
Kalk Bay | Map
* RSVP: Aisling Heath 021 7882266

Praise for Invisible Earthquake

“Whenever I have witnessed the dread in a mother’s eyes suddenly turning cold, on hearing that their baby has died, I have had to curb the urge to run away. This intensely personal and powerful journal that Malika has brought to us should become an essential adjunct to any journey that begins with that moment of sharing a baby’s death.”
– Dr Carol Thomas, Specialist Obstetrician Gynaecologist

Malika gets to the core of what “inimba” really means - the seat of our soul that connects us to our ancestors and provides a link to future generations. It is that which makes us truly respond to each other’s pain and suffering and gives us the ability to ‘feel for”. A wonderful resource from a generous heart and soul. Abaphantsi bathi Camagu sis’wam! The Ancestors Salute you, my dear sister!
– Nomfundo Walaza, CEO, Desmond Tutu Peace Centre

In the seven years since my own loss and subsequent ongoing counselling of other bereaved parents, I have never read more explicit and perfect words to describe the gut wrenching grief that all mothers suffer. A must read for all family and friends who want to begin to try and understand the enormity of our desperation.
– Kim Palmer, The Compassionate Friends

Malika Ndlovu writes the way she lives, Invisible Earthquake is filled with abundance - from terrible grief and sorrow to healing and joy. Her poetry and song hold you as she holds herself.
– Pregs Govender (Author of Love and Courage – A story of Insubordination)

Earthquake has been a long time incubating, but today the book goes to print. The day a book goes to print is a happy day for me the publisher, the last few weeks have been full of nit-picking and finalising details, seemingly endless back and forth between me and Natascha Mostert, our book designer. When I went over the proofs this morning, I was deeply moved, it is a beautiful book, and it has been worth all the hard work and difficult decision-making of getting it to this point.

Malika Ndlovu has written a book in which she shares her journeying through the grief of losing her third baby, a girl, Iman Bongiwe, to stillbirth. The reader is allowed to enter the intimate dark space that a grief stricken mother goes into as she tries to come to terms with her loss. Stillbirth, like miscarriage, statistically happens much more frequently than is widely known, and yet it has not been written about much in literature. It is something women are asked to get over without much ado or attention paid to their grief. Malika bravely pays attention to her experience through writing and thus opens up a space for others who have experienced similar losses to be mirrored in their grief, to have their anguish acknowledged.

Invisible Earthquake - a mother’s journal through stillbirth - is framed with an essay by Sue Fawcus, a specialist obstetrician at a public maternity hospital who writes of stillbirth from a medical perspective, she writes of statistics, causes, and of her experience as a medical practitioner in dealing with stillbirth and neo-natal death. Two social workers from the same hospital, Muriel Johnstone and Zubeida Bassadien, write about how they accompany women who grieve for their babies.

The book also contains a resource list of books and helpful organisations. Colleen Crawford Cousins is the cover artist as well as the co-editor with me, and Hannah Morris did the hand-lettering on the cover. Charley Pollard took the photograph of Malika that appears in the book. Making the book has been a collaborative effort. Enormous thanks are due to all who contributed to the book.

Grief is not rational
Grief is you out of control
Grief could not care about your calendar
Your feeble projections
Based on theories about time
Grief pulls your strings
After letting you loose long enough
To feel the weight of another fall
Grief calls you inside
Locks you up
Takes you back to childish threats and tantrums
None of which make any difference
To what happened
To what is
To what can ever be replaced
Or ever be the same
Grief knows your secret weaknesses
Your hiding places
Can turn the most ordinary, familiar places
Into alien landscapes
Grief will change your walk, your talk
Will bring you unexpectedly to your knees
Grief ignores all your pleas
For relief
Escape
The numb of forgetting

Grief attacks out of the blue
Before you can even think of a defence
And even though you were there
For the brutal digging and carving of this wound
The cruel abruptness of this loss
Grief will make you zone out
Wonder where you are
Puzzle at the smallest and simplest of questions

Grief will make you want to hurt yourself
Will want to hold you back
When time pushes you forward
It will make you think you are stagnant, stuck
Frozen in her grip
Never to be released
Grief will try to convince you
That nothing and no-one can takes her place
Grief will pretend to disappear
Then jump up in your face
Laughing at you for thinking
You’d left her behind

Grief teaches you patience
Gives you no choice
Makes you want to rant and howl
Takes away your voice
Grief can destroy all you have built
And believed in
If you let it
If you forget to give in
To realise that resistance
Encourages grief to stay longer
That denial
Invites grief to sink deeper roots
Widen the spread of its blinding poison

Grief is a cleansing fire
Embrace it
Surrender to its demands
Grief knows the way
Knows the only way out
Is through
It is within this cave
Under the spell of its darkness
That grief’s real work begins
There
Where we are most afraid to go
There it waits
After the wars of mind and heart
To welcome you
To reveal the truth of its purpose
To grace you with its many gifts

It is the hotel bill or photograph discovered in a pocket
The open mouth saying nothing in defence
It is the fact splattered across the courtroom
Exposed to cameras, microphones and strangers ears
It is the addict at the brink of suicide
Frozen between picking up a fix or the telephone
It is the vibration in your chest and stomach pit
That hits when you read or hear a real guru’s words
…It is the written and the unwritten
The space and the line
It is different
It is the same
It is buried
It is the silence before
Beneath and beyond
The lie
It waits for you and I
It will not die
Truth is both spirit and flesh

Cape Town performance poet and writer Malika Ndlovu will launch Truth is both Spirit and Flesh her third poetry anthology this Friday 7th November at 18h30 at the Africa Centre, 44 Long Street.

Malika’s words whether performed on stage, read on the page, spoken or sung are an intimate and inspiring conversation. She delivers them with conviction and an obvious passion for life. Over the last 15 years her work has appeared in publications and performances across South Africa as well as in Austria, USA, UK, Holland, Ireland, Germany and the Philippines. Truth is both Spirit and Flesh captures a seven-year period of writing, including a selection of tribute poems to the some of the diverse high profile and ordinary South Africans who have nurtured and inspired her as a writer and as a human being.

“ I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the gift of creative expression and for the countless individuals who have in the past and continue to shape and enrich my life, sharing the best of themselves with me and most importantly, carrying me through times of self-doubt or personal loss. I don’t want to wait till they die or I do, to praise them. Even the one’s who’ve rubbed me up the wrong way or painful experiences have been my teachers and this is the core theme of my new poetry collection. There is a thread of gratitude for the love and life lessons I have been given so far.”

This sentiment was also the catalyst for a song Malika wrote for her collaboration with legendary jazz musician and singer Tina Schouw and vocalist Ernestine Deane of Moodphase5 fame. These three artists since 2006 have collaborated to form the unique poetry and music trio Womantide.

Tina and Ernestine will perform at the launch with Malika in celebration of her latest offering.

Malika is currently curator of Badilisha! – An African Poetry Exchange, an Africa Centre poetry project which launched its calendar of events on Heritage Day this year at the same venue. In January 2009 Malika’s next book entitled Invisible Earthquake: a woman’s journal through stillbirth, will be launched by Modjaji Books and her latest play Sister Breyani directed by Lara Bye, will have its world premier at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees in April 2009 before a run at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town.

For further information contact Lorelle Royeppen-Viegi on lorellev@gmail.com

In its second incarnation under the Africa Centre’s banner, what was the Spier Poetry Exchange will now be launched as Badilisha! – An African Poetry X- change at the Africa Centre in 44 Long Street on Heritage Day, 24 September.

This project - which in late January 2008 took the form of a one-week festival with a series of educational community-based satellite activities – has been further developed by the curators Malika Ndlovu and Lorelle Royeppen –Viegi. Badilisha! – An African Poetry X- change will no longer be confined to an annual festival format but manifest in a range of poetry and related activities throughout the year, with a festival showcase remaining a highlight on this calendar scheduled for late May 2009 tying in with Africa Day activities on 25th May, an annual commemoration of the 1963 founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now the African Union.

Badilisha! – An African Poetry X- change’s 2008 programme launches with the first of a series of events - a National Heritage Day event entitled Belongings: A Poetic X-ploration of Heritage. A feast of ten Cape Town - based poets including Andrea Dondolo, Rustum Kozain, Jitsvinger (Quintin Goliath), Khadija Heeger, Burni Aman , Winslow Schalkwyk, Diana Ferrus, Christopher Ferndale, Annelie De Wet and Harrison Makubalo will bring their inspired and varied voices to a creative re-engagement of our personal and political histories. Each poet will bring a box – a container and symbol which they will “unpack” for us through poetry and performance, sharing with the audience the significance of this apparently neutral container now infused with meaning. The box as a metaphor potentially points to personal heritage, legacies and heirlooms, forced removals, occupation of new spaces, unpacking of histories, safekeeping of one’s belongings, storage of archival material or treasures and much more. In the hands of our local poets we enter the realm of multiple interpretations and perspectives as they lead us up a staircase, down a passage, into a corner, onto balcony of this historical building where we share their discoveries, recoveries and revelations.

Belongings: A Poetic X-ploration of Heritage takes place on 24th September 2008, from 15h00 to 17h00 at 44 Long Street, the new premises of the Africa Centre (www.africacentre.net) – also home to the recently launched the New Space Theatre. Entrance to the public is free. For further information contact curator Malika Ndlovu on himoon@yebo.co.za or Project Manager Lorelle Royeppen-Viegi on lorellev@gmail.com

For almost a year I have not slept at great lengths or depths
I hear myself giving instructions, warnings or threats
From the moment I am rudely awoken
I soothe, negotiate, debate, plead and coerce
Silence and solitude have become scarce

I rush my meals, eat with one hand
Simultaneously feed someone else on demand
I wear clothes that are durable and practical
Providing quick access to my breasts
I clean and prepare
I plan and arrange
I drop off and pick up
I shop and wash up
I pack and tidy
I slump into the couch and zone out on TV
I hand over half the load, temporarily

But the flipside is

I am performing a sacred task
I have collaborated with God in creation
I am needed and loved unconditionally
I am a teacher rewarded daily
By the awakening and wonder
That my experience
My offerings of information bring
I am learning and re-learning
Remembering the exquisite beauty of simplicity
The delight in little apparently ordinary things
I am laughing, I am listening, I am playing
I am dancing the ancient dance of motherhood
To a demanding and intoxicating melody
Women all over the world
All through the history of our existence have understood
The true business of being here, of being human
The territory that is me has expanded
Literally and spiritually
Encompassing an ever-growing capacity
For love

Big hands helped little hands
Fill a red plastic bucket
With all the possibilities of sea sand

Big hands rested
Little hands built
All hands clapped as a dream
Raised itself on the shore
Low windows and high balconies
To look out from
Gardens and passages to explore
But a sudden wave sifted through the grains
And the dream could be seen no more

Big hands lay limp
Little hands formed little fists
Big feet began walking away
Reluctantly little feet followed
The end of a sad sunny day

Red bucket empty
Abandoned on the sand
Ignored by beach strollers
Pecked at by gulls
Eventually blown out to sea

Red dot bobbing towards horizon blue
Tired little dreamer
Now tucked safely in bed
When finally eyes close
Castles rebuild themselves
Inside that little head

Light was here
before the darkness of doubt
the ash and storms of our destruction
before all of this
all of us
before flesh and bone
walls and windows
soil, mountain, sky or sea.

Light does not recognise such boundaries
penetrates your armour
beams from between your ribs
behind your eyes
shows up on the horizon unfailingly
even when you cannot
or choose not to see.

No amount of tears or rage
can dissipate it into its alter self
light mutates into incarnations
we plaster with other names
yet it remains true to itself
an indestructible essence
with immeasurable capabilities.

Light is a labyrinth
of exquisite complexity
yet maintains a simple undeniable beauty.
is within and beyond definition
or captivity.

Light lives here
dancing in unexpected corners
of my home and heart
spilling from my son’s mouth
my beloved’s eyes
my mother’s gut-deep laughter
here I shower my soul.

In the centre of the shadow
is the secret of the light
under the veil of night
light reveals itself to me
an eternity of dreaming
of whispered meanings
stories of immortality
and I wake into forgetfulness
my swimming with the stars
immersed in endless galaxies
interrupted by gravity
till I remember
that light also lives here.

Right here
hidden at the core
of everything
of all that I call you or me
the magic of universal unity
from gigantic to atomic
a cosmic vibration
exploding the myth of separation.

Light lives
here
Light lives.

MALIKA NDLOVU AND PETER VAN HEERDEN 16 April 18H30 SABC 1

DIRECTED BY LLEWELYN RODERICK

Malika Ndlovu, feminist spoken word poet and musician, is rarely ever stumped for words. This is until she first views controversial performance artist Peter van Heerden’s hard-hitting piece about abuse against women and children. Peter on the other hand, is a man of few words. His message is articulated in ways that make you squirm but keep you rooted, and paying attention. With both artists sceptical about the others’ genre – it is amazing to witness a collaboration come together with political and creative depth as they poignantly take on the issue of burying South Africa’s colonial past.

I have tried hiding
Amidst the intensity of daily living
Sinking into the anonymity
Of earthbound business
Denying my thirst
My hunger
For You
Watching my willows weep at this river running dry
Knowing
Without needing to see
That without honouring and remembrance
Of You
All that matters withers
And time is merciless in its march

Surely a million conscious breaths
Conscious steps
I have lost to this sleepwalking
Pretending to be alive

For Cecelia Anastacia Dunn

My mother
is a radio station somewhere between twenty-four-seven fast talk
hip-jiving-modern pop and arm-swaying-love-crooning golden oldies.
She’s a storyteller and memory caretaker that will make you travel in time,
dream in lead, ink and chalk, make you brave in the dark ,
make you laugh till you cry, cry till you laugh.

My mother
is a St. Stephen and Mother Theresa to all animals
with a particular passion for the canine kind.
She’s got a song, a game, a history and psychology for each one
spontaneously sprouting in the fecund soil of her mind,
so that even when their mongrel bodies leave, their stories stay behind.

My mother
is a self-confessed sucker for tear-jerking movies, romance and sentimentality
whether she’s shamelessly hooked on soapies or revelling in classical love stories,
drawn to kitsch ornaments or bright floral linen with frilly edges as a final touch.
Still, she’s no fool when it comes to the real thing; she has loved with abandon,
had her fair share of betrayal , been broken in battle, sacrificed and lost so much.

My mother
is a stubborn warrior, a proud Leo, a rebel turning her back on the pack
she’s bold dreamer, a healer, a teacher beyond paper, desks and walls.
A daughter who raised her brothers and sisters, when her mother died in childbirth,
loving them through the trauma, the poverty, the difficulty of all their youth;
she knows compassion, the value of family, of her history , every detail she recalls.

My mother
is in the tone of my skin, the curve of my back, the shadow in my gesture, my face
she’s the dance of a woman’s defiance, rising in my relationships, blazing in my eyes
a lover of words, of company, the treasurer of memories and small priceless things.
She’s a campaigner for individuality, seeker of variety,
the risk-taker and dream-scaper I have now become.
Being her first and only daughter I feel her resonance in my bones
I recognise the kind of mother she’s been, guiding the way I raise my sons.

My mother
is her own woman, a character, a soul separate from mine
but my life is inscribed with her passion, her being.
Even she says: when I grow, when I heal, when I fly, so does she -
my mother lives inextricably and eternally in me.

Saturday 15th December 2007
(Day after her father’s 80th birthday, 4 days before she flew from Jo’burg to spend the Christmas holiday with me.)

July 2005

We flock to the shoreline, the hills, the cliffs
Just for a glimpse of you
Emerging or sinking
Out of or into magnificent Mother Blue
Our eyes magnetised
Scanning the shimmering surface
For your signal spray, a fluke, a fin
As the sunset tide slowly rolls and folds in
Waves persistently extending themselves toward the land
Knowing their dying lies in reaching the sand
Knowing they will reincarnate from the centre
In similar yet not identical form
Reborn
Dancing to the music of Divine Law

for
each
life
a
single
storyline
between
each
vertebra
coded
secrets
revealed
only
through
questioning
listening
through
time
locked
in
the
braided
bone
chamber
of
my
spine
an
archive
I
now
return
to
recalling
experiences
dissolved
into
memory
fragmented
yet
not
lost
beyond
all
the
bending
twisting
shifting
extending
I
have
done
since
those
intersections
in
my
life
chapters
buried
in
cells
wrapped
in
tissue
attached
to
bone
my
body
is
my
witness
every
second
every
choice
every
wound
and
subsequent
scar
every
promise
every
regret
every
dream
or
desire
I
cannot
forget

for
each
life
a
single
storyline
a
yearning
for
home
certainly
mine

Ominously
Unsuspectingly
Our naked flesh was pierced
By a decade-buried barbed boundary
Separating
Territory you
From territory me

Now in the shocked silence
We bleed
Blood in the bubble bath we’d prepared romantically
Warm oils and water for intimacy

No soap will wash this stain clean
No words can cover the distance
Rapidly spreading between us
As we pull the plug
Draining the love-pool we dreamt of swimming in

24 hours later
You are tiptoeing around me
Half - surprised at the bitterness
Still spilling from my tongue
From the all-night battering
Of your moral judgements
My half-desperate defenses
The slowly rising heat of the dialogue
Defining truth from lie
Forever a chasm of difference between you and I
That I replayed
Replanted like thorns in my head
While you slept soundly
Alone in our bed