GRIEFSEED

131pp., colour illus., paperback, Karavan Press, Cape Town, 2025

ISBN: 9781067222499

Foreword by Professor Makhosazana Xaba.

A reflection on grief by Malika Ndlovu that includes poems and personal essays.

The book also includes photographs by Coral Bijoux and responses by Makhosazana Xaba, Janet Aalfs, Hisla Bates, Sarah Malotane Henkeman, Gcobani Qambela, Lindy ‘Gogo Masechaba’ Dlamini, Iman Rappetti, June Bam, FreeQuency, Coral Bijoux, Peter Fox, Pregs Govender, Fiona Ross and Barbara Boswell.

"These creative pieces function as both a window onto an individual woman’s life as she has journeyed with, through and beyond grief; as well as a mirror, inviting the reader to see their own lives and losses reflected within Ndlovu’s. This invitation to sit with grief, hold it, look it in the eye, and tend to it, is also an invocation to consider multigenerational relationships – how grief cements our relationships to the past, to ancestors, to descendants ...  If we dare to take up this visceral knowing, grief can transform us, becoming a generative site for renewal, rethinking, recasting." Barbara Boswell, author of The Comrade’s Wife and Grace: a novel

South African poet, playwright, performer and arts project manager Malika Lueen Ndlovu is the author of the poetry collections include Born in Africa but; Womb to World: A labour of love; Truth is Both Spirit and Flesh; Invisible Earthquake: A woman’s journal through stillbirth and CLOSE, and the plays A Coloured Place and Sister Breyani.