This is a multi-tasking collection of poems by three Zimbabwean poets, Tawanda Chideme, George Kandiero and Tim Maneswa.
The blessing that a multitasking anthology brings to the reader is that each poet showcases his different ways of handling various themes and methods of crafting the poem.
But, inversely, and this can be an enriching reading technique, one read this book in search of what each poet really appears to specialise in and what he appears to master.
What is the standalone character of each poet? What is each poet’s signature and what new themes or ways of writing poems are the poets bringing to the table?
I think Tawanda Chideme has mastered the Zimbabwean myths of origins.
Myths of origins are stories that explain the beginning of a natural or social aspect of the world.
These myths are a cultural way of explaining how something came to be and are often rich with moral information.
Chideme’s passion in that area is clear. In the poem “Hwedza Mountain” Chideme explores how that iconic mountain began as a giant that cursed the creator and he, in his anger, turned Hwedza Mountain into a heap of earth, boulders and trees as we know it today.
The mountain, it is said through folklore, had just eaten a whole elephant and had drunk from the nearby Save River until that magical river became dry for a while.
In a parody of TS Eliot’s “Macavity-the mystery cat,” Chideme plays around and refashions with the well known and charmed story about the original character of the Makwiramiti (Soko) totem.
He turns it around into a story about how the ways of the monkey can be traced in our midst in contemporary society.
Makwiramti has fast fingers. He is the proverbial master fraudster. He is a pilferer. He steals like there is no tomorrow. After the act, his fingers are not found on any surface that he touches and therefore many serious modern thieves of Harare must be wearing the Makwiramuti charm!
The poet writes articulately and creatively about the Bantu migration and how and why we the Bantus left Guruuswa, the land of tall grasses, coming South to the land of Chivavarira, which means the promised land. During that journey, biblical manna is introduced.
And when the Bantus reach Kasambabezi river, Biri the ancestor of ours, produced her rod and hit the waters of the Zambesi and they parted.
- And as men, women and children crossed over, they were given totems by a voice from above. This poem talks about the origins of Shona people and how the soft pristine earth, at the time, was equivalent to the biblical Garden of Eden.
At that time, the commandments were given. Chief Haarari’s name became Harare as we know it today. Mambo Mbari of Shumba Gurundoro totem, had a sister called Sekwa, who was mocked and teased by Mbari’s wives for being crippled.
Sekwa sulked and threw herself into a pool and that pool became known as Dzivarasekwa.
Mambo Mbari had a son in law called Kambudzirume, and that is the origin of the word Kambuzuma. Mufakose is a name coming from Shava Mhofu who is related to Mbari through his wife, Mwera.
He is Mufakose because he is like the proverbial maize cob which is roasted from both sides and it loses it all in the fight for life. Mabvuku, which is another area within today’s great Harare area, comes from the word mabvukubvuku, which means an area of many springs.
This poem is a must read!
Pain runs across George Kandiero’s poems.
His persona has capacity for various emotions. He is a master at naming various forms of pain. “She is nolonger mine” is the most excruciating statement that a man can utter. I presume that the man has lost a mother, sister or a lover and the memories of “her sweaty brow, a scruffy frock, the swollen legs etc” remain on one’s mind which, we are told, runs “on cruise control.”
“Mr. economy” is an emotional piece. You notice that the economy begins with a small letter ‘e’ but it ravages the person’s body and soul until he cries out, “just retire, Mr. economy!” It is a song sung at a huge unrelenting giant: “Mr. economy unhinge us from the hook of your horror.”
Then there is the poem about one Cynthia who stays next door to the boy persona and all he recalls is how the adults abused the 8 year old endlessly.
There is the cracking whip that splits Cynthia’s flesh, the whistling slap that left Cynthia numb and the drunken daze of fists and kicks.
She is a Christ-like figure. It is apparent that that the abuse of children is rampant in our society.
Cynthia is always clad in a purple oversized uniform and Cynthia’s screams of pain each day echoes across the township, ripping to pieces the calm of the night.
Nobody rescues Cynthia and the persona could not do anything because he is also another child of eight.
Kandiero’s shorter poems like Jazz, Today and Beer may actually do well if sung with the accompaniment of an instrument as they feel like they were written with a close consciousness to sound and emotion.
- Tim Muneswa’s poems are about the magic that erupts from real places, people and time. He writes with a dreamy and edgeless brush and the spooky worlds come alive in his key poems.
Edgeless art is not driven by a desire to be understood but by a desire to draw out experience as felt by the artist in its original dream like state, without giving away predictable meaning “The water people,” for example is a poem about all those haunted places we have known.
A man or woman stands near a real pool, with an elder going deep into the history of the goings on around the pool.
The pool cannot be pointed at with a human finger, because as they say in Shona, the finger may actually grow gangrene. So the elder points at the pool using his shaking elbow. In the mornings, we are told, you can hear the sounds of spoons scouring last night’s meal, girls giggling as they cook and the clanging of iron beating iron, making spears and hoes.
In the afternoons, if you are by the pool, we are told, you hear sounds of women
pounding sorghum in their mortars and can you actually see freshly laundered clothes. In the evenings, we can actually hear the sounds of herd boys driving cattle home and the narrations many more hair rising things. The voice of the narrator insists that these things really take place.
In the poem “Encounter” a beer drinker says good bye to his drinking mates in the night and, as is often his habit, he passes by the graveyard by the road, loudly speaking to each of the relatives buried there, updating them on the events in the family; “Anzvirai resigned from the army.
Timo and his family are now in South Africa. Sabhuku Ganje got an ox from Simba’s case.”
And many other news are shared.
Then on this particular night, something very nasty and shocking happens to the beer drinker when he is talking to the dead in the cemetery. The dead show him that they are not really dead and that they may not always be exactly friendly to talkative and daring drunken passersby.
“Goooooal!” is another poem that dwells on the baffling and mysterious side ofeveryday things like a game of football. For instance, the crowd and the short sighted referee say the penalty has yielded a goal but the goalkeeper and several other conscious players can actually see that it was not really a goal. The
biggest challenge is that the goal posts are not adorned with nets at the time.
In these poems by Tim Muneswa, there are many invisible things that ordinarypeople see beyond our simple three dimensional world.
This is a collection of poems meant for readers who are looking for unity in diversity. That the colection is named after Tawanda Chideme’s poem, “Mosia-oa-Tunya” is a clear indication that the fulcrum to this whole collection is the society of Zimbabwe and its superimposing spiritual and physical traditions.
About the reviewer
Memory Chirere is a Zimbabwean writer. He enjoys reading and writing short stories and some of his stories are published in No More Plastic Balls (1999), A Roof to Repair (2000), Writing Still (2003) and Creatures Great and Small(2005). He has published short story books; Somewhere in This Country (2006), Tudikidiki (2007) and Toriro and His Goats (2010). Together with Maurice Vambe, he compiled and edited (so far the only full volume on Mungoshi called): Charles Mungoshi: A Critical Reader (2006). His new book is a 2014 collection of poems entitled: Bhuku Risina Basa Nekuti Rakanyorwa Masikati. He is with the University of Zimbabwe (in Harare) where he lectures in literature. Email: memorychirere@yahoo.com
