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Cradles is a collection on the nature(s) and nurturing that cradle us. Womb, the first section, is the first cradle, both 'nature' and 'nurture', under-acknowledged and often unmentioned. Beyond the grand and intricate physical womb of individuals, there are collective wombs that incubate on yet grander and greater scales. In Land(s), the second section, the cradles we typically identify as our 'origins.' but as the Cradle of Humankind in present day South Africa teaches, the many lands of today are interlaced in concealed ways and originated in a single, little understood place. Tides are explored in the third section: the physical migrations and cycles of time that shape us. Tides can shift, upset and remake the nurturing of cradles; they also cradle us in cycles of wreckage. Wind, the final section, sets us free of places and times of origin. This detachment can bring freedom, a sense of loss/lostness, and the many things in between. The freedom/loss/lostness spiral whirls with the wind and transforms. in surrendering we can alter its pace to our needs and desires.
About the author
Salimah Valiani is a poet, activist and researcher. Her 2021 poetry
collection, 29 leads to love, is the 2022 Winner of The International Book Award for Contemporary Poetry. She is also the author of four other poetry collections: breathing for breadth (TSAR 2005); Letter Out: Letter In (Inanna 2009); land of the sky (Inanna 2016); Cradles (Daraja 2017). Her story-poem, Dear South Africa, was one of seven works selected for the 2019-2020 Praxis Magazine Online Chapbook Series.
