Mubanga Kalimamukwento
Mubanga Kalimamukwento (she/her) is a Zambian poet; her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Tusculum Review, Contemporary Verse 2, and Passengers Journal and has been translated into Italian by Menelique. She won the 2021 Deborah Keenan Poetry Scholarship and the 2022 Tusculum Review Poetry Chapbook Prize, selected by Carmen Giménez.
poetry
Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies
trade paperback / 6 x 9 / 130pp
“…joy wilts, Dust to dust, the preacher calls it Ashes to ashes, as mwana tosses it mangles itself inside her nostrils now the aroma of starved earth, the brilliant white of a mother’s new coffinment waiting to receive it.”
Mubanga Kalimamukwento’s multi-lingual, hybrid collection of essays and poems, Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies, is a kaleidoscope of emotions: at once self-excavation and epitaph, exhumation and burial song. These words are a conversation between the present and the past.
Kalimamukwento deftly navigates the aftermath of devastating personal losses, particularly that of her mother. Through them, she invites readers to reflect on their own experiences of loss and the enduring impact of familial bonds.
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“Kalimamukwento is an author who has perfected her craft. Brilliant.”
Rešoketšwe Manenzhe, author of Scatterlings
“Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies will be unmissable”
The Tusculum Review
Out of extraordinary loss, Mubanga Kalimamukwento has crafted a work of extraordinary genius. The desire to resurrect the dead informs every page—in the laments, the odes, the silence, the heartbreaking futility of the poet’s quest. No, there is no other mother, or father, or sister, but the power of early love, the imprint of memory sustains. A fierce love song, a prayer, an unforgettable homage by a visionary artist determined to survive.
Sheila O’Connor, author of Evidence of V
There is a primordial complexity to proverbs. We are supposed to receive their aphoristic truths and wisdom as our ancestors and their ancestors did ad infinitum. In Mubanga Kalimamukwento’s Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Die, translated from the Bemba proverb tapafwa noko, apesa umbi, there is an intentional consideration and reckoning of what it means to contend with the reality these proverbs suggest. Whether it is through loss, grief, material or immaterial burials, Kalimamukwento weaves an erudite bildungsroman narrative through poems, essays, and proverbs that seek no arrivals for their heart-rendering departures, but ask for readers to wade in that in-between space where one can launch themselves into infinite directions to contend with the weight of their lives. For contemporary African letters, this is foundational work, as the proverbial saying goes, to leave an indelible mark.
Cheswayo Mphanza, author of The Rinehart Frames
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