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Freedom Mutanda
Correspondent
Six Chimanimani and Chipinge writers poets have released a poetry and letters anthology titled “The Dark Moon: Cyclone Idai Poems and Letters”.
Forty-eight pages are filled with raw emotion.
The letters were written by Freedom Mutanda, Ranganai Chikwara and Sifelani Tonje.
Mr Chikwara, St Charles Lwanga Secondary School headmaster, laments the loss of two innocent students during the cyclone.
On the poems, Tendai Ngadziore begins the anthology with a thought provoking poem, “Cyclone Idai the destroyer”.
She skilfully depicts the depth of destruction through description and rhetoric questions.
She compares the effect of the natural event with the ocean in an angry mode.
“The valley and ocean fuming and foaming,
Blending with the sound of mourning.”
Four years on, many families are still struggling to get closure after the devastating effects of the tropical cyclone as some victims are yet to be accounted for.
Because of that, Tendai ends her poem with a repetition of rhetorical questions:
“Why? Why? Why?”
Paiyepo Arts Centre director, Phillip Kusasa, also has several poems attributed to him.
His first poem, “When the devil knocked”, equates Cyclone Idai to the devil and the weapons of mass destruction.
Indeed, the force of nature left an indelible trail of death in Chimanimani and Chipinge.
In African cosmology, the moon and the sun connote good or bad, depending on the brightness or lack thereof, hence the title, “The Dark Moon”.
Solomon Mwapangidza, the 2014 NAMA winner in the First Creative Published work gives a powerful rendition of the African belief system in “Inscrutable.”
He speaks about the warning about “mermaids wrath” that was given to Chimanimani residents.
This, however, clashes with scientific explanations on how cyclones start in the sea before making a landfall.
This “Dark Noon” is a must-read anthology that chronicles how Cyclone Idai destabilised the community and left it mourning.
Alec Kaposa of Essential Books Publishing Company edited the anthology, while typesetting and the cover design was done by Freddie Chisale.
Online Reporter