ABOUT THE BOOK
“I did not anticipate the breadth of places Jenna Mervis’ Braided River would take me to. This brilliantly apt title unlocks a web of moving streams through the senses, the heart, through the earth of the body, awakening curiosity, awe, archives of visceral memory. You will not be where you were before you opened these pages and allowed these poems to seep or sink in. Each one taking on its own form, wild yet sculpted by currents of change in the life of a woman, a wife, a first-time mother, a poet-human (being) in brave relationship with the sharply contrasting sites and landscapes she visits or inhabits.
These are all kinds of homes she moves within, through and away from, finding and losing anchorage inside a house near a forest, on rocky pathways, within a marriage, a family unit, her encounters with the more-than-human and her own solitary being. All of these are radically reoriented by the tumultuous journey with her treasured son. Her honed poetic language is earthy, intimate and uncaging in its imagery. She writes as invocation, provocation, revelation and honest, courageous confrontation. Jenna’s writing evidences a quality of listening that feels like deep, even sacred tending. The kind you would do at that edge of life, its emergence, blossoming or falling away, where perspective profoundly shifts or dissolves and silence gains substance, beyond the threshold of words.”
Malika Lueen Ndlovu
ISBN: 978-1-0492-2421-3
Publication Date: May, 2026
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenna Mervis is a South African poet and storyteller. She was born and educated in Durban and holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. Her poems and short stories have appeared in several South African literary journals, and she is the author of two poetry collections: Woman Unfolding (Modjaji Books, 2011) and Braided River (Indeed Books, 2026). She lives in Cape Town.
Indeed Books 