The Standard 22 June 2014

JUNE 22 TO 28, 2014
THE STANDARD STYLE / ARTS / BOOKWORM 29
Poetry
beyond
the
page
By Bookworm
I
ENJOY reading good poetry. Unfortunately,
you do not get a lot of that in Zimbabwe. It
comes out far in between. And where the
young poets fall short, they compensate
with performance of the word. Historically,
poetry began in Zimbabwe and many parts of
Africa, as a spoken art and remains one to this
day, but many Zimbabwean readers tend to
view the poem on the page as an impenetrable
artifact. Colonial education did us.
The significant presence of spoken word
in Zimbabwe often escapes those focused on
the written text. Although poetry has been
considered by many as the most elitist of literary
genres, the many ways poetry has been
performed has eluded the notion of the ivory
tower, making public and social impact. Venues
such as Alliance Francaise, Book Café and
Zimbabwe German Society have popularized
poetry.
It’s a shame Zimbabwe has never considered
to appoint a poetry ambassador in the
form of a national Poet Laureate to promote
poetry to a broader audience beyond the cloistered
student experience. Poetry is not just
about the words on the page. It's about where
you put your feet when you get out of bed in
the morning. It’s there. And in poetry, we can
share fears and ambitions and things we can
never quite say out loud. The stage becomes
an altar of truth.
In 2005, performance poetry went mainstream.
The Harare International Festival of
the Arts (HIFA) introduced its now popular
Poetry Café for spoken word programming.
And the Book Café thereafter started a monthly
poetry slam. During this period the economy
and politics were about to implode. It was
not surprising that most of the poetry was angry
at the system and those who represented
it. Dambudzo Marechera was unanimously
chosen as an expressive embodiment of radicalism
and dissent and the movement came
to be known as House of Hunger Poetry Slam.
The hunger was both physical and spiritual.
In fact, the House of Hunger Poetry Slam
became a pilgrimage for poets, artists and
anyone who was disgruntled the powers that
be. Old battles were now new again. Progress
was elusive. The super patriots blamed everyone
but themselves. Even books like State
of the Nation: Contemporary Zimbabwean
Poetry capture a lot of this message poetry.
This poetry is a reminder that we never forget
what happened and that we are ever vigilant
in fighting for our rights. Words mean everything.
Without words, without the spoken
word, The House of Hunger would have been
like a bird without wings.
But in a larger sense, what I think about the
necessity for Zimbabwean poetry in general,
is for a kind of recording of specific cultural
moments and to record the history of a people.
Most of the performance poetry on the circuit
is embedded in the vernacular, in various
poems employing multiple “voices”, in free
verse as a form in itself and an interest in the
longer structures of poetic sequences. Those
who are making waves are as varied as the
poetry they perform. These include Tinashe
‘Mutumwapavi’ Muchuri, Batsirai Chigama,
Synik, So Profound, Godobori, Mbizo Chirasha,
Aura the poet.
I have attended too many circle-jerk spoken
word events, winced as my peers and contemporaries
ruin their poetry using over chewed
rhetorical flourishes and rhymes. Pauses. Cliches.
Only to leave me and others with serious
heartburn. The challenge for spoken word
artists in Zimbabwe is for them to seek new
and innovative forms to present their work,
including new media. We are past Gill Heron-
Scott’s time when the revolution was only “televised”
but now it is also being twitterised.
Pre-independence poetry in Zimbabwe
inspired rebellion in a young generation of
Zimbabweans [notably Musaemura Zimunya,
Kizito Muchemwa, Dambudzo Marechera],
and they resisted the status quo established
by the both the academy
and white middle-class culture that
held political power. The discontent
of the poets stemmed from the colonial
order of apartheid, political
apathy and the ubiquity of racism.
In the 70s the burgeoning radicalism
in the politics and culture of
black Zimbabweans had matured.
Many African states had by now
achieved political independence
but for Zimbabwe “the beautiful
ones were yet to be born”. The
guerrilla fighters were on the
brink of winning the liberation
struggle. Black poets undertook
a commitment to write explicitly
on political topics and conveying
their ideas through idiomatic
language. This language was the
same street idiom of black communities
that these poets came
from. The poets understood that
they needed a new language to
break the linguistic straight
jacket of the colonial system.
This is the poem in Kizito
Muchemwa’s Zimbabwean Poetry
in English (1978).
When spoken word started
seriously in Zimbabwe in 2005
the fundamental notion was
that performance, as a dialectical
art, had the potential to
be transformative and could create political
change. The performances
were overtly
political events. It is
no surprise that the
performance artists
decided to embrace
Dambudzo Marechera
as the posthumous
honorary patron
of the movement by
calling the project House
of Hunger Poetry Slam after
his first book. For Marechera
himself used “public performance”
as a way to address the
gap between his literature and his life.
For Marechera, just being, was a performance.
In Mindblast, he reveals that he “lived
as he wrote and wrote as he lived”. Poetry has
always been a site of tension between authority
and power and a platform for subversion.
For many school children, poetry is a pet
hate. It’s one of those subjects that are cryptic.
I know of too many friends who were scarred
by poetry in school so much that it put them
off reading completely. Yet poetry is beautiful
world. Combining poetry with performance is
one of the important ways in which the genre
transforms, evolves and gains diverse audiences.
We are past the 20th Century notion
that fixed poetry on the page as a self-sufficient
verbal icon. We must not exclude poetry’s
voicing or oral presentation as secondary
– the visual, aural and performative are factors
that cannot be read around or left out.