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Call for Submissions | The Duality of Life

In many cultures, life and death are considered to be different sides of the same coin. Each birth foreshadows an inevitable death – at some point, each vital thing becomes dilapidated, the verdant tends to decay. The understanding of our inevitable deaths makes us uncomfortable in hospitals and old age homes, we avoid obituaries unless they are written about people who were close to us. 

Yet, when COVID-19 became a pandemic of international importance in March of 2020, death came to rest in each of our homes and we could no longer ignore it.

Sometimes the reaper came and took our loved ones and that was the obvious manifestation of death. Since then, we have also had to bury our ways of life – work, social interaction, funerals, and weddings. The pandemic also revealed vulnerabilities in socio-political systems. Thus, this season has forced us to collectively reimagine the old ways and usher in new ones. 

For instance, working from home has led to the great resignation as the world’s workforce reimagines the work/life balance, a respiratory disease sparked many international protest movements #ENDSARS, #BLACKLIVESMATTER by revealing the ways in which our systems are fragile. In fact, the past two years have demonstrated the world to be a ‘ball of confusion’ as The Temptations termed it and we have all experienced this chaos on individual and collective levels. As we have experienced the pandemic and its related side effects collectively, it is only right that we collectively reflect on it as Zimbabweans and as poets.

The inaugural issue of Ipikai is set to reflect the first quarter of the year 2022. How do we celebrate the beginning or a new year and the birth of a new literary magazine in an atmosphere that doesn’t allow us to ignore the death and upheaval that face us on an almost daily basis? In this issue,  we invite poems that speak to the theme of resetting. 

The circle of life demands that even dead plants fertilise the soil to make way for the new. As we reset our lives and acclimate to the so-called ‘new normal’, what parts of the old order do we want to bury forever and what new traditions do we want to start? On the other hand, are there odes to the old order that deserve a moment of silence, fallen heroes and loved ones whose lives deserve to be eulogised and, thus, live on in print?

This issue is both a dirge that acknowledges the losses we have suffered these past two years and a song of hope that gives us something to look forward to as Zimbabweans. Now more than ever, we are forced to acknowledge the dual nature of life and live in the tension of lamenting the past whilst simultaneously walking into an uncertain future – we cannot really celebrate birth without acknowledging death, we cannot be hopeful unless there is a reason to despair and the first issue of the Ipikai Poetry Journal is the perfect medium through which we can ponder the duality of life.

Tariro Ndoro
Editor
Ipikai Poetry Journal

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IPIKAI ISSUE 1 THE DUALITY OF LIFE

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