Durban - Poet and arts curator Malika Ndlovu is the featured poet of this year’s AVBOB Poetry competition which commemorates Sharpeville (21 March 1960) by recognising those who work to promote human rights.
Ndlovu is part of the Spieel Arts Therapies Collective, an organisation committed to providing community-based creative initiatives that address inequality and intergenerational trauma.
Ndlovu's work has been described as speaking with power, authority, sensitivity and subtlety to this particular moment in human history.
“We are learning ever more about the clinical impact of how poetry works in the brain, particularly after shattering experiences, as we grapple with how to bring the pieces of our lives together,” she said.
“Things are fragmented and unsayable and poetry makes it possible to tell your story, find resonances with those of others and re-emerge from the trauma never the same as before, but like a mosaic, a new wholesomeness,” said Ndlovu.
She said her application of poetry as medicine is rooted in the understanding of the power of storytelling, of creative expression.
“It transcends elitist views that define how poetry looks and sounds or what purposes it can serve beyond literary merit or celebration of the individual.
“Healing for descendants of violated people starts with remembering after being dismembered, displaced. We are re-collecting the scattered, unearthing the fuller story of our ancestry and reclaiming ownership over our narratives and mother tongue,” said Ndlovu.
She said her poetry extract from her 1999 debut collection Born in Africa speaks aptly to the vast scope of this restorative work, spanning indigenous wisdom and the universal human challenges within our histories within community constellations.
Writers are encouraged to share their experience in poems of comfort and consolation in any of the 11 official languages by visiting www.avbobpoetry.co.za to read poems in their mother tongue during Human Rights Month.
Independent On Saturday