A collaboration between artist and poet exploring archetypes and belonging from South Africa, through London to the Scottish Highlands.
These poems reflect a journey from a past delineated by racism, trauma and violence towards a present life of peace and intense natural beauty. Permeated with nostalgia and loss; songs of an immigrant community alienated in their own land, but pierced with fierce hope, faith in redemption, and a determination that we should all belong.
Olivia was born in Cape Town during South Africa's apartheid years and raised in a Coloured community in Durban. Her family were the descendants of 'misegenous' relationships, rejected by their own kin and segregated by government decree. This community of people have struggled to preserve their varied heritage through generations of displacement and diminished means. As a young teenager, Olivia was scouted by a model agency and worked in Johannesburg, Cape Town and abroad. Later she worked in journalism, married a Scot, and moved to the Scottish Highlands. Although she has written poetry all her life, this is her first published collection of poems.
Domenica was born in London. After a classical training in Italy, she returned and works mainly in sculpture from her studio in South London. She met Olivia in 2019, started reading her poems, and worked a response in charcoal drawing to each one