adminElliot Ziwira @ The Book Store
HOPE is the driver of dreams, without which all humanity’s aspirations are strangled. As certain as the sun shall rise tomorrow – indisputable as the fact that death flourishes in life – and that hurt is love’s bedfellow, hope should always be given a chance, although often-times it may seem hopeless; so that our cherished flowers do not perish in the dry season of our travails.
Yes, gentle reader, pain is the precursor to gain, moss a culmination of loss; and the rainbow, God’s promise not to bring another deluge of Noah’s days, comes after a storm.
Happiness is a condition or state of mind rather, whose existence cannot be hidden, but whose source is ensconced in our hearts; no matter how many heartbreaks life might have dropped our way.
There are seasons in life, different seasons really, but as each of them comes the other ebbs and passes; such is the circle of things. We plant our flowers in the rainy season, hoping that the dry season might not see us napping; without giving much heed to the tempests that come with the rains, scuttling our hopes, uprooting them and exposing them for all and sundry to have a field day at our expense; yet all our fears manifest in the dry season.
But can it be trite to say that it is the dry season that teaches us to store our grain, and to pick the best seeds in preparation for the vagaries that nature throws our way? A good flower is not determined by the way it blooms in spring, nor the way it luxuriates in summer, but by the way it withstands the dry season. If it is born of a weak seed, that cracks open in the wake of the scorching sun, then the farmer’s joy is only but ephemeral.
Fate gives no man no choice, as the deck of life deals cards randomly, making every hand a winner, and every hand equally a loser.
It is up to all of us to turn the odds to our favour by playing well those cards dealt us and paying close attention to how others play theirs.
Downpours may always seem to be meant for us in equal measure to the shimmering sun on our sprouting flowers, but it is in such situations that our mettle is tested. And to start with gentle reader, engross yourself in poetry and locate yourself in the miasmic orbit that takes your dreams to heights untold – it may be worth your while.
Astounding, therapeutic, deeply engaging, evocative, thought provoking, hair raising, addictive, transcendent and challenging, is what good poetry should do, and it is that and more which the anthology “Flowers of a Dry Season” (2015) published by Forteworx Press, edited by Beaven Tapureta and Brian Tafadzwa Penny (T.P Brian), does.
The anthology, a product of the convergence of 14 hilarious, toddling, yearning, scathing, exhorting, soothing and infectious voices, on the poetic landscape of hope, as the African dream, or pertinently the Zimbabwean reverie, is under threat from a blazing internal and external inferno.
The contributors to this moving collection are Monica Munashe Rupazo, Tinashe Chimuriwo, Owen Kambanje, Audrey Lindani Mutinhiri, Leonard Mutsa Makuya, Gloria Murindi Dangah, Brian Tafadzwa Penny, Jubilant Ncube, Tendai Noreen Sadziwa, Edmond Shonhiwa, Taurai Vincent Sekenya, C.J Mylton, Patrick Mahlasera and Yeukai Mapingure.
Oozing the ebullience of youth and seemingly inexperienced, yet well schooled in the voyeuristic nature of Man, the poets articulate their own experiences in a world that places so much emphasis on material acquisitions as a milestone to glory, giving scanty considerations to familial, communal and national ethos that shape the individual. Caught up in the race, the individual struggles to locate himself or herself in the national discourse as a result of suffering, toil, deceit and avarice.
Although they may be clad in different classes as they hone their individual voices, and take them to their own separate crescendos, the poets’ clairvoyance leads them to a cirque which resonates with shared hope. Because they are still seeking their individual tunes, discord cannot be avoided here and there, but the sweet melodies of their unique voices remain top drawer, as they blend their strengths to give a rhapsody that remains lingering in one’s ears even after the music has long since stopped playing.
The discarding of contrived poetic forms, use of conventional symbolic elements, variety of styles and purveyance of a plethora of thematic concerns that cut across social boundaries, ensure the capturing of a universal tale whose movement carries experiences lived and shared to a sentimentally realistic conclusion.
The paralysis, malaise and claustrophobia that weigh down on familial, communal and national discourses leading to despondency, frustration and dispiritedness are told in such a way that the reader cannot help locating himself or herself in the different sites that the poets open up.
The yearning voices implore Man to own up to his foibles so as to redeem society from the jaws of the monster that creeps from its belly – an orgy of its own creation. Society has become a deathbed; and a furnace where dreams are barbecued, and the nostalgia of a gleeful yesterday attempt to throttle today’s aspirations, as in TP Brian’s “If Today were Yesterday”.
The poets are conscious of their crucial roles as truth’s defence, the voice of the voiceless as well as their custodianship of the mores and values that shape their people.
The dream transcends geographical boundaries, as the African story is under siege.
The problems that the Motherland faces seem to be orchestrated by its progeny as a result of avarice, deceit and individualism.
Like David Mungoshi in “Live Like An Artist”, Edmond Shonhiwa in the title poem “Flowers of a Dry Season” emboldens his fellow artistes to rise to the occasion in defence of their people’s cake, even if the guillotine stares them. He rallies them: “Arise, authors and book lovers! . . Be a rock/An oasis of this generation/Spring in this arid era/Let your pen and paper save us.”
The poems “The Inferno Echoes”, “Can we have one Africa?”, “I am African” and “Are they yours Africa?” by Edmund Shonhiwa, Audrey Lindani Mutinhiri, Tendai Noreen Sadziwa and Leonard Mutsa Makuya respectively, embrave the African to be wary of the Western machinations which seek to emasculate the African’s story, as the continent’s progenitors turn in their graves, wondering what has become of their off-spring.
In “The Inferno Echoes”, Shonhiwa takes a swipe at the xenophobic tendencies of South Africa (Azania), whose warped thinking leads to the imaginary existence of foes among fellow brothers, forgetting that Africans were “nurtured together. . . brawled against imperialistic regimes” as one family.
The persona implodes: “I saw my children burn in flames of your anger/ I saw other neighbours burning too.” The persona remonstrates with the wayward sibling: “This Africa is our mamaland/But you cast my children into the inferno/Where they diminish into ashes/Why, brother Azania, why?”
It is the demise of social morality, the trivialization of the sanctity of life, the debilitating injustices and egregious voyeur at the heart of the African discourse per se, birthing the metaphorical dry season, which emaciate the Motherland’s brood; leading the poets to question: “I wonder if they are indeed your seed/I wonder/Africa, are they yours?” (Leonard Mutsa Makuya, “Are they yours Africa?”); “What happened to oneness among Africans?/What happened to humanity?/What has led to the division among Africa’s children?. . . What has caused social immorality?” (Audrey Lindani Mutinhiri, “Can we have one Africa?”).
In their contempt for the vices inherent in Man, which derive excitement from trauma and suffering in others, the artistes are not controlled by gender. There is no feminism or chauvinism in their call for the redemption and nurturing of the seeds of this our dry season for the purposes of regeneration and progress. “Flowers of a Dry Season” (2015) is indeed a powerful collection of individual episodes that interact and merge into the national psyche to relay a fairytale of hope and a shared vision.
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