Gathered Seams brings together nineteen poems by poets from Botswana, Zimbabwe, Malawi and South Africa. Their voices move between languages and landscapes, from kraals to mine dumps, carrying grandmothers’ hands and mothers’ absences, wooden spoons and stillborn lullabies. They hold violence alongside survival, grief alongside magwinyas, refusing to reduce anyone to only their trauma. Halala to nineteen years of Modjaji Books making space for women’s voices.

Includes a note on translation and multilingualism in the poems.

The collection includes the following poets:

Danille Arendse (Bester), Diane Awerbuck, Rutendo Chichaya, Yvonne Fontyn, vangile gantsho, Abigail George, Nosipho Gumede, Carri Kuhn, Tsholofelo Lebese, Olga Leonard, Skye Ayla Mallac, Sethunya Hlobisa Matsie, Marthé McLoud, Asante Mtenje, Tshifhiwa Hellen Munyai, Emma Paulet, Mosa Neema Rabannye, Patricia Schonstein, Luto Skweyiya

A Modjaji Books l Woordeloos title

Cover artwork by Isabel Thompson, “To Zanzibar by Motor Car” /woodcut print/ 1992,
2 x 1m, ed 50