Description
Winner of the 2022 International Book Awards in Contemporary Poetry
In her newest collection, Salimah Valiani traces the meaning of love in 29 different ways. Two themes thread the poetic work: the exploration of love via loss, movement, stillness and surrender; and the attempt to understand historically the socio-ecological dismantling we are living throughout the world today. This book is about love in a large sense, of a sort/sorts needed to heal ourselves and our world ravaged today with division, fascism, ecocide, inequality, and violence. It reaches to define this larger love, avoiding the more pervasive love poems that focus on romance and individual healing, and ultimately proffering that love is the means to transformative change in the twenty-first century.
Poetry. Women's Studies. LGBTQIA Studies.
Author Bio
Salimah Valiani is a poet, activist, and researcher. Born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, of a Ugandan mother and Tanzanian father, like her parents, Salimah left home in her late teenage years and began a journey of study and work that included extended stays in Montreal, Quebec; London (UK); New York City and Binghamton (USA); Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario; and Cape Town, South Africa. She has published four collections of poetry: breathing for breadth (2005); LETTER OUT: LETTER IN (Inanna Publications, 2009); LAND OF SKY (Inanna Publications, 2016); Cradles (2017); and 29 LEADS TO LOVE (Inanna Publications, 2021). Her latest publication is the poem-story, "Dear South Africa," one of seven pieces in Praxis Magazine's 2019-2020 Chapbook Series.
Author City: TORONTO, ON CAN