an interview with Zimbabwean poet Christopher Kudyahakudadirwe
1.
Tell
us about yourself
First and foremost, I’m an avid reader
of contemporary literature especially literature written by Africans or
anything written about Africans or simply anything written about black people.
It doesn’t matter who wrote it, but as long as it is literature that focuses on
the narratives of African people, then I’m ready to gnaw my way into it.
Secondly, I’m a poet who started writing
poetry by accident many, many years ago and never thought it would be
appreciated by poetry lovers out there. And when I say many years ago, I mean
some time in 1989. One day I was invigilating an examination paper and then
this line popped into my mind: The Bible is buyable dah, dah, dah. Every time I
repeated this line, I heard the rhythm in it and voila, my love for verse was born!
Today I’ve over 70 poems appearing on my pages on writerslounge.net.
Thirdly, I’m also a prose writer who has
written several short stories and novels with very little seeing publication
until a few years ago when the internet allowed people like ‘us’ to write and
post there. Some of my work was read on BBC Network Africa; my short story, ‘Garden
of Agony’, was published in an anthology entitled Ghost Eater and Other Stories; another one, ‘The Class’, was
published in Moxy Campus, a University
of the Western Cape Digital Cultures Class project. My recent triumph is when
the opening chapters of my yet-to-be-published novel, You Are Not Alone, were published as a short story in New Contrast: Manifesto, South Africa’s
oldest literary magazine.
I’m also into stage acting after I was
invited to appear in a play entitled De
Waarheidscommissie 1913-2013 (The Truth Commission 1913-2013) by a visiting
Dutch theatre group called Action Zoo Humain. The play was written by
ElsOpsomer and is a fierce condemnation of the infamous Ghent World Exposition
of 1913. I heard the play was screened on Cape Town TV. It was filmed at UWC
but because I don’t watch TV I never bothered to find out.
So, there that’s who I am in a nutshell.
2.
What
inspires you to create, what traditions in your country or outside that have
inspired your creativity.
People and silence. People living in
those parts of the world that I’ve so far traversed have had a great influence
on what I write and how I write. First of all, I consider the world as a human
zoo and I’m the tourist who is visiting there. The behaviour of human beings –
how they interact, their actions, their trials and tribulations, their joy,
their sadness – has been my source of inspiration.
Silence has played a great role in my
writing career. Although my other name is Voice, and this must suggest one who
speaks a lot, but that is a misnomer because it is in my silence that most of
my writing was born. I like listening more than speaking because I believe ears
will never get me into trouble but my mouth can. I listen to people speaking in
buses, trains, at work, at the wells or in drinking spaces – wherever I go! –
and I ‘poach’ their narratives and then from them and recreate my creative
creations.
The literary culture in my country,
Zimbabwe, died with the unprecedented death of a literary organisation going by
the title: The Literature Bureau. This organisation published accessible and
successful Shona novels such as Nzvengamutsvairo
by Bernard Chidzero, TambaogaMwanangu
by Giles Kuimba – just to name a few. It also had an itinerant programme which
took books around the countryside informing rural folk like us about what the
country was reading and who was writing what was being read. And now this is
not happening anymore. Thus, I think The Literature Bureau deserves a grave at
the National Heroes Acres.
3.
Tell
us about the poetry scene in your country & your books or work so far
Beside the few ‘connected’ writers and
poets who have been published or are still getting published, not much literary
ripples are coming out of Zimbabwe. Nowadays, with the advent of the cancerous
corruption it is the ‘connected’ who get published. I struggled a lot trying to
break into the published world back in my country. I’ve written a number of
Shona and English novels that have died a still-birth while I was there. The
culture of reading has also declined to such an extent that it has strangled
the book industry – and that does not mean I’m writing for monetary gains. No!
I just like mirroring people’s lived experiences for them to see how many
shards of their Hunhuism/Ubuntu remain. Furthermore, most people don’t have the
money to splash around buying books in my country these days.
From where I am I can see my work as resurrecting
from the dead. I have people willing to listen to silence, people with an ear
for my story, people willing to publish my work and people who appreciate a
piece of art and find glory in it. I’ve been writing a lot. I completed writing
You Are Not Alone and I’m looking for
a publisher for that novel. I think it’s a great story because it dwells on
some of the ills of the society that have been exacerbated by the advent of HIV
and AIDS as well as political bickering in Zimbabwe. Like I’ve already said,
its opening chapters appear in New
Contrast: Manifesto (Volume 44, Number 1. Autumn 2016) as ‘Voices of the
Ancestors’.
4.
What
sets you apart from other poets writing now?
That’s a rather tricky question because
as far as I’m concerned poets will never be the same. Our life experiences and
the socio-economic environments in which we grew up differ greatly and have a
bearing on what we write about. To address the question directly, I would say
that, for me it could be because I’m a man who likes to write about women. Many
times I’ve my protagonists as females. This could stem from the fact that my
mother played an important role in my upbringing. In the early 60s and the 70s,
when my father was doing rounds in the country’s prisons because of his
political views, it was my mother who looked after us. She worked on farms making
bricks in order to raise school fees for us and that was a monumental feat for
a young woman to do during those days. I believe writing about women is a
tribute to her and all the other women who love their children to that extent. Thus
my poetry and prose literature tend to hinge on feminism most of the time.
5.
What
else do you do or like doing other than poetry?
I love road running. Actually the poem
‘My Heart Packed a Suitcase’ was composed while I was running a 21.1km race in
Wellington (Western Cape, South Africa). To me road running is as good a
challenge as writing is.
6.
What
are you writing now?
At the moment I’m translating into
English one of my Shona manuscripts that I penned in 1995. I feel that the
story has relevance to what is happening today in my country and I’ve had to
translate it into another language because of the reluctance of publishers in
my country to see it as worthy to get out to the readers. In between I’m also
churning out verses and helping young people to realise their creative side of
themselves.
7.
If
you were to be elected the president of your country, tell us what you would
really like to see happening, what you would achieve on and how.
Freedom of speech and association, my
brother. Without different voices contributing to the country’s narratives
development comes to a standstill. Period.
8.
Tell
us about your poem(s) in BNAP
I’ve two poems that have been featured
in BNAP. These are: ‘The Passage’ and ‘My Heart Packed a Suitcase’. ‘The
Passage’ is a poem which I composed while I was waiting for the traffic lights
to turn green at a road intersection in Cape Town. As we sat in our cars
waiting, an old lady from a nearby old people’s home needed to cross the road
but because she was using a walker it took her time to cross the road and we
had to wait for her to so. I didn’t think it could make the grade until I
submitted it for my MA assessment. My supervisor gave it an A grade and I felt
good about it. It has also been reprinted by Wordgathering Poetry, an
organisation that promotes poetry for and by people with disability.
‘My Heart Packed a Suitcase’ is a
protest poem that was inspired by service delivery protests in black townships
in South Africa. Visuals on TV and in newspapers played an important role here.
While political leaders revel in their triumphant marches to parliament after
being swept to power by the poor ‘povo’ votes, they forget their promises until
the next elections. The poem is an indictment of these leaders who are not only
confined to South Africa but to the whole continent at large.
9.
What
areas do you want future BNAP anthologies to address?
My suggestion is that future BNAP
anthologies should set themes that contributing poets should address in their
compositions. I believe this will help streamline anthologies according to
themes. Therefore, readers seeking to understand particular poetic themes will
be able to find them in one volume. Themes such as war, migration, tradition, etc.
could be set. I also think that the publishers must also be in a position to
give each contributing poet a hard copy of the published anthologies. When I
tell my children that I’ve been published in an anthology they ask me: where is
your contributor’s copy? And when there’s nothing to show them they do not
believe me.
I thank you.
