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An anthology featuring eight Zimbabwean poets has been published just in time for this year’s World AIDS Day which is observed on December 1. The annual World Aids Day will be celebrated under the global theme “Getting to Zero: Zero New Infections. Zero Deaths from AIDS-related illness. Zero Discrimination”. World AIDS Day was first observed in 1988 as a response to the untreatable disease HIV/AIDS.
There have been great improvements in the global combat against AIDS such as access to medication but its mystery remains a major drawback to families, governments, non-governmental organisations and scientists but when the message of prevention is packaged in poetry, the world is likely to hear. Poetry reveals hidden shadows in our daily behavioural processes. Poetry sings to that which is clamouring for “redemption” in us.
“We are One (With or Without)” is an AIDS poetry compilation published this year by Diaspora Publishers (UK). The compilation, done specifically for the annual AIDS event, carries verse of desperation, consolation, and education as the poets featured meditate in their different serenities (or disturbed thought) to figure out what this horrific disease wiping away millions is.
The anthology speaks to those spaces in our mind that secretly harbour our sensibilities and wishes broken by the AIDS pandemic, sensibilities and wishes which can only be pacified when they are sung to, spoken to in soothing written forms. The poems are in English, Shona and Ndebele languages, all in one anthology.
Some of the poems are good for quiet reading and for reciting on a World AIDS Day. The subject of AIDS has been handled by poets and writers in different ways and yet each time a publication on the subject comes out, readers look for something new, for the truth “not known before”.
As the reader pores over the poetry in “We Are One”, there is likely to be magnetic obsession with it, specifically the poetry of Edward Dzonze, who uses scenic short episodes in which the persona acts without thinking, or Jerrimos Mugwenhi, whose power of poetry lies in language, or Catherine Magodo, who uses a rarely used “macaronic” technique.
While AIDS is the stem of the anthology, how the poets carry their message through unedited thoughts in interesting. Poetry is a free practice of the mind. Editing it in the mind limits its power. Thus in “We Are One” the poets are at war with the known facts about AIDS, they intend to disturb the laboratory “norms”.
One of the situations leading to AIDS has been facilitated by people’s sexual behaviour. Two of Edward Dzonze’s poems “Free Condom” and “Cigarette After Sex” captures those sudden moments of reflective behaviour immediately after the persona has committed a sin as in the following stanza: “Time according to my clock/Is exactly six minutes after six o’clock/Just after dawn/That time when we yawn away sleep from our eyes. /Six times I pulled/And realised how I was fooled/Into committing an adulterous act” (“Cigarette After Sex”).
Jerrimos Mugweni, a known poetry performer whose stage name is “Sir Zvavanhu”, has a gift in creating a “rumble-tumble” of Shona words and make you draw a poem in it.
His poetry is emotional, thoughtful. You should read his touching “Tsamba Yorufu” or “Unotondifungawo?”!
In his other Shona poem, “Chamuvhazhange”, he curses AIDS, condemns it for the suffering it has caused the world-over.
In one of the stanzas, the poem says, “Uri mutemarege wembada, mbama inodzipura nenyama/Chamuteganebwe wakwevera pazuzo rehwangu upenyu/Uri nyamatsatse inoyeredza chero ne shoroma”.
The unborn baby has not been spared by the AIDS pandemic and Rudo Kanukamwe shows this in her poem “The Baby I Never Held”.
In another poem by the same poet, “Spelling my name”, the persona, obviously infected by the disease, longs for childhood which is now far back in time and the victim wants to be taken there “to where I knew no sickness/to where I knew no stigma/to where I spelt out my name/And listened carefully to the echoes.”
An interesting feature of the anthology is also Catherine Magodo’s employment of the macaronic style which uses two languages in the same poetic text. This is rarely used by local poets. One of her poem has a Shona title “Upenyu Mutoro” but the poem is in English, in other poems called “Burden of Love” and “Less and Less” she throws Shona sentences into the English poem.
The poem is about a woman who is carrying her AIDS-ridden husband to hospital in a wheelbarrow.
The effect of macaronic style is lyrical and ornamental. In Magodo’s poem “Burden of Love”, where the persona uses Shona, deeper private thoughts are expressed which otherwise she would not express to anyone for the sake of love.
Magodo’s poems are experimental and bring out the hopeless situation of women and children faced with the devastating reality of AIDS. “Burden of Love” in particular, although a little adulterated by misplaced line breaks which break the flow, dramatically puts across an aspect of the issue of women and AIDS.
One of the stanzas says, “Ndapfidza hangu hamawe/With a wheelbarrow I battle/The galleys on the way to the District hospital.” and another says, “Ko ini ndakatadzei? /I was the one at home raising/His children while they brought/Back news of how he tried to eat pleasure.”
Other poets in the anthology are Percy Nhara, Joseph Muyangata, Regina Mutiwanyuka and Caroline Ngwenya.
The lifting up of the dark veil that used to separate the HIV positive people from society is done so well in Nhara’s poetry which calls for oneness and love. The anthology borrows its title from one of his poem and what’s more, Nhara’s Grade Five child is also featured in the anthology with her poem “Africa”, calling for the continent to bury AIDS-related stigma.
In this anthology, the poets’ technique and message interplay though it must be said that the editor did not do enough justice to the anthology as the reader is at times jolted away by overload of punctuation and misspellings.
As we all on December 1 reflect upon this pandemic, it is also worthwhile to recite soothing poems for those living with AIDS or present gifts of poetry to the affected families and friends or even be grateful to those who have always been there for the sick.
Diaspora Publishers is a UK-based publishing company which was formed in 2011 by Zimbabwean writer Kennedy Madhombiro. The company has so far published a number of local writers such as Monica Cheru, Mbizo Chirasha, Tendai Maturure and others.
Online Reporter