Look at yourself
you have not died yet
you are an unending revolution
you are surviving loss
About
Busisiwe Mahlangu is an award-winning South African poet, performer, copywriter and dreamer. She is the author of Surviving Loss, a poetry collection later adapted into theatre at the South African State Theatre Incubator program. She uses art as a medium for activism and holding space for transformative conversation.
As a trained performer and theatre-maker, she wrote and produced three theatre productions; "Rusty Knife", "A body Makes Fire" and "Surviving Loss" which was stage at the South African State Theatre Incubator Program. She was cast in "History is the Home Address" by Mongane Wally Serote,
Busisiwe has showcased her work across South Africa, Lesotho, Mozambique, Sweden, Eswatini, Nigeria, and the USA. She was a writing fellow at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies (University of Johannesburg) and a graduate from the International Writing Program (Iowa University). She holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of South Africa.
Mahlangu received the inaugural New Contrast SA National Poetry Prize in 2020. In 2017, she won the Tshwane Speak Out Loud and was longlisted for the Sol Plaatje European Union Award. She hosts PoetsHubSA, a podcast powered by the National Poet Laureate Hub that profiles and showcases South African poets' work.
Her work appears in Atlanta Review, Wild Imperfections, Yesterdays and Imagining Realities, and elsewhere.
When she is not writing, she runs her business Busi Creates, making beaded jewellery.
My mother's mother has done this suffering for my mother
My mother has done this suffering for me
This is how I inherit a scar
Surviving Loss
In her poetry collection Surviving Loss, Busisiwe Mahlangu fights for breath and voice. The poems hold years of undoing silence. This collection built open doors and windows in places around a house that had none. To offer an escape or create a way into the house. With gentleness, trauma and pain are explored and stretched to find ways to heal.