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Beaven Tapureta Bookshelf
“Marry My Language” (2014) is spoken word artist Tendai Maduwa’s self-published collection of 30 English poems which he usually performed at international arts festivals such as the Kistrech Poetry Festival in Kenya.
“Marry My Language” was launched last month in Harare during the International Literature Festival LitFest Harare.
In the anthology’s acknowledgements, Maduwa thanks the Kistrech Festival directors Christopher Okemwa and Edna Atambo for inspiring the transformation of his work ‘from the stage into a book’.
However, Maduwa has been published in other anthologies before his own anthology “Marry My Language”.
For instance, his poems were featured in a 2013 collection called “The Enchanted World”, published by the 6th International Poetry Festival Guntur, India.
One peripheral question looms up: is the audience for spoken word poetry diminishing particularly in Zimbabwe that now poets are publishing their own anthologies?
Or it is a normal trend that stage poets will eventually need a book either of their poetry or prose to leave in the hands of their fans wherever they perform?
Is it because a book appeals to all senses!
Cynthia Marangwanda also known as Flowchyld, who is one of the known stage poets in Zimbabwe, has an award-winning novella titled “Shards”. It seems the novella marked Flowchyld’s gradual invisibility from the stage. At LitFest Harare held last month, she resorted to reading her poetry rather than performing!
The book “Shards”, earning her slots for discussion at various events, has taken much of the space that she seemed to have reserved for performance.
Maduwa’s seniors such as Albert Nyathi have also published books.
Nyathi has put one of his popular stage poems titled “My Daughter” into a beautifully illustrated booklet.
Other poets who have made a mark on the poetry performance stage but have also decided to put their creative imagination into book forms are Tinashe Muchuri who recently published “Chibarabada” and Mbizo Chirasha aka The Black Poet, who is re-working on his anthology published a few years ago.
It then means Maduwa’s decision to put his works into an anthology was worthwhile because the message can now travel yonder easily in a book.
“Marry My Language” was printed in the USA, a glaring exposure of the failing local printing industry but that’s an issue for another time.
The anthology is split into four sections, “Life and Nature”, “Love and Romance”, “Culture, Gender, and Identity” and “Peace, Politics and Corruption”.
Before the reader gets to the actual poetry, there are almost 10 pages that have the acknowledgements, preface, foreword, and six solidarity remarks from Maduwa’s friends across the world.
This looked very burdensome as sometimes reader interest for the actual poetry is lost while going over the ‘non-poetry’ first pages.
Each section begins with a supportive paragraph of a previous review or commentary from a different newspaper to guide the reader on what each section mean or how others have enjoyed Maduwa’s poetry before.
Maduwa’s poetry is not far removed from his own life and in the anthology the insensitive society is questioned through a powerful voice.
The first section “Life and Nature” mainly carries the memories of an orphan, agony of a girl child and the temptations that haunt adolescents in this era of HIV and AIDS.
The section opens with poems of loss and longing. Anguish and courage haunts the poem “Ready to Face Life” in which the persona, inspired by the portrait of his late mother, reflects: “I built my home in the streets/ Sharing food with flies/ Sleeping in rough corners of downtown streets/ Drinking from the running drains/ But I am not dead.”
Yet having fought the good fight and crowned hero, the persona in “I Miss You” longs for a special person, his departed mother, to give him the congratulatory embrace.
“Success I have witnessed
But love I have missed.”
One can feel the meaninglessness of success rendered by the absence of a loved one. Maduwa is not only inspirational to street kids of his gender but also to the girls that roam the roads who are being taken advantage of by the diseased sugar daddies. This is clear in the poem “Traitor”.
Realisation dawns upon a girl who has been sexually exploited.
Hardened by the experience, she promises herself “a new leaf is turned/this one never to spoil again”. The virtue of hard work is not found in the persona in “Nightmares of an Adolescent” who falls victim to all sorts of temptations, losing all stability and sensibility.
The second section plunges the reader in a river of sentimentalism.
Love is in the air but Maduwa’s style is at times literal.
Again, we forgive the poetry because it could have been meant for stage and now that it is disembodied from the embellishment of performance, it carries various interpretations.
However, the imagery comes alive.
Concern as a virtue is vividly ‘metaphorised’ in the poem “Certain Dreams” in which the dreamer is ‘set’ in a five-star hotel but his dream, a nightmarish reality outside the hotel, haunts him.
The poet takes to the narrative mode as in “Rejection”, a love poem.
The third section covers culture, gender, and identity.
About these three issues which have terribly slipped into African literature discourse, the poet expounds some witty lines to inspire the youth.
In the last section Maduwa bitterly speaks against a society founded on hypocrisy, corruption; the evils which then calls for poetry to become an instrument for peace.
One of the stanzas of the poem “Voice of Reason” goes:
“If they refuse to give us audience/ Let us be involving/ Let’s borrow poetry/ The power of the spoken word/ That no one can resist”.
A youthful energy shows itself in the whole collection, a certain protest for venting out perspectives in a creative manner and the hunger to be heard.
Maduwa is multi-talented artist. He is a poet, actor, public speaker, and founder of Awake Zimbabwe. He lives in Harare with his family.
Dear readers, I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Bookshelf loves you.
Online Reporter