Issue 7 | Shades of Grief

Grief is not a single note; it is a symphony of silence and sound, stillness and storm.

“Some say there are five, some say there are seven, some even say there are fifteen…stages of grief,” writes Batsirai Chigama in her introduction to this latest issue of The Ipikai Poetry Journal. “Who is qualified enough to understand the extent to which loss can affect or effect the life of those left behind?”

In Shades of Grief, Zimbabwean poets were invited to explore the many textures of loss and longing. From personal mourning to collective sorrow, from elegies whispered to the dead to verses that rage against forgetting, this issue captures the raw, unfiltered truths that follow in the wake of absence.

Reflecting on the poems accepted for this issue, Chigama shares: “A friend said to me that ‘…grief is like a suitcase you carry every day. Some days it’s light and some days it will be heavy and difficult.’ I felt this in most of the poems selected for this issue. The never-ending cycle. The forever healing scab…”

These poems offer no simple resolution. Instead, they illuminate how grief lingers, shifts, and shapes us; reminding us that mourning is not an end, but a passage.