This 10-minute audio poetry experience created by performance poet and applied arts practitioner Malika Ndlovu asks you to receive the invitation of your body and breath. Interweaving word, sound and metaphorical image, it surfaces themes of universal human experience as physical being and its relationship with breath. In its moments of it being witnessed, caught, taken away, held, expelled or extinguished breath is an intimate partner, a guide. This poetic voyage intentionally reflects on the gravity of toxic social and psycho-emotional environments and the dis-ease, destruction and grief they cause. It is also a meditative seeking out of the regenerative processes and (re) source of breath, where it can turn or re-turn us to balance, to our natural rhythms with ease, as we recover lightness and ways to reenter the dance of being alive.
Listening Guide from the Poet
COMING UP FOR AIR as audio poetry with a subtle ocean drum soundscape, is best listened to with surround sound or via a good headset/earphones. Allow your body to be in a relaxed posture and ideally with eyes closed, for the full immersive 10 minute experience. Let your breath go where it wants and needs to throughout the journey. Perhaps use the first few and last moments of this piece to witness your own faithful breath accompanying you.