In her latest collection, which is the first of its kind in South Africa, ‘The Art of Waiting for Tales: Found Poetry from Grace –a novel’, Poet, Makhosazana Xaba reflects on how some words jump off the page and demand attention. In this wide-spreading conversation, the speakers will be exploring themes of violence, trauma and healing in Xaba’s latest collection and Ndlovu’s five collections of poetry. Through unpacking these themes, they will explore poetry as a vehicle of persuasive urgency and political imagination.

The speakers will aim to uncover not only issues relating to violence and trauma in Xaba and Ndlovu’s work, but further themes of grace, intimacy, creativity and the literary imagination. At the center of their conversation, as Ndlovu’s work continuously attests, they uncover poetry as a tool for (re)creating life, as people grapple with loss and bereavement. Ultimately, through Xaba and Ndlovu’s works, they will show these poets as being “testament to the utterly amazing healing power of creativity and black feminist imagination” as Barbara Boswell writes. Moreover, as Ndlovu’s (2022) forthcoming collection Grief Seeds attests, poetry allows us an opportunity to excavate the (re)generative nature of trauma and loss.