Do yourself a favour and visit Poetry International to read some great poetry from around the world. The current  featured Zimbabwean poet is Freedom T.V. Nyamubaya. Editor Irene Staunton introduces her as “a rural development activist, farmer, dancer and writer who was born in Uzumba. Cutting short her secondary school education in 1975, she left to join the Zimbabwe National Liberation Army in Mozambique where she achieved the rank of Female Field Operation Commander, later being elected Secretary for Education in the first ZANU Women’s League conference in 1979.”

Here is one of Freedom T.V. Nyamubaya’s poems from 2009.

Coming and Going

In Zimbabwe rain is an event
Like the sighting of a new moon
In the fasting month of Ramadan
The butterflies display a short-lived beauty
Before they become the sparrow’s festive dish
Beautiful angels in a distant dream
Of babies in the reeds and life after death.

There are more prophets of doom
Than angels from Heaven
Most rivers are silted
With fertilisers and asbestos powder

From the higher-ranking scientific politicians
Whose power to stop development
Can be measured in kilogrammes of pain
No gatecrashers at Heroes Acre please!
You have to have been mafia to qualify

This entry was posted on January 13th, 2010 at 3:27 pm by Bev Clark and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.