Cradles: New and Collected Poems

Valiani, Salimah

ISBN 10: 0995347492 / ISBN 13: 9780995347496

Published by Daraja Press, 2018

About this Item

Gut/Very good: Buch bzw. Schutzumschlag mit wenigen Gebrauchsspuren an Einband, Schutzumschlag oder Seiten. / Describes a book or dust jacket that does show some signs of wear on either the binding, dust jacket or pages.

Seller Inventory # M00995347492-V

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Cradles: New and Collected Poems
• Publisher: Daraja Press
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0995347492
• ISBN 13: 9780995347496
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: very good

About this title

Synopsis

Cradles is a collection poems on the nature(s) and nurturing that cradle us. They are divided into four parts: Womb is the first cradle, both 'nature' and 'nurture', under-acknowledged and often unmentioned. Beyond the physical womb of individuals, there are collective wombs that incubate on yet grander and greater scales. Land(s) are the cradles we typically identify as our 'origins', but as the Cradle of Humankind teaches, the many lands of today are interlaced in many concealed ways and originated in a single, little understood place. Tides are the many migrations and cycles of time that shape us. They can shift, upset and remake the nurturing of cradles; but also cradle us in cycles of wreckage. Wind 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 to it 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.