Celebrating the Arrival of a new Zimbabwean Poetry Anthology

State of the Nation: Contemporary Zimbabwean Poetry

"Publishers in Zimbabwe have certainly failed poetry," writes Tinashe Mushakavanhu in his introduction to the new anthology of contemporary Zimbabwean poetry, State of the Nation. We can extend this further: publishers everywhere have failed poetry as they pursue profitable genres. And if in doing so they argue that they are trying to give readers what they want, then readers everywhere have failed poetry....

But here is a new anthology that will get many reading. It's the first collection I have seen that covers a cross-section of classic and contemporary Zimbabwean poets. I, for one, am honored to have my poems featured alongside Chenjerai Hove, Dambudzo Marechera, Charles Mungoshi, John Eppel, Nhamo Mhiripiri, Ignatius Mabasa, and many others. What's more, the collection features short personal essays, which in the words of co-editor David Nettleingham, tell the poets' stories "of personal experience, of how the passing of one generation into another is felt and understood."

This project is a result of Tinashe Mushakavanhu's dream to "read...a poetry that reflects the spiritof this country [Zimbabwe]'s people through words that survive and vibrate as strongly as that spirit". This book is published by The Conversation Paperpress (UK), and it contains works by thirty Zimbabwean poets.

We have begun to read about the Zimbabwean situation in fiction, particularly the short story, now the same "situation" is on the canvas of the poets.