Title: State of the Nation - Contemporary Zimbabwean Poetry Editors: Tinashe Mushakavanhu & David Nettleingham Publisher: The Conversation Paperpress ISBN: 978-0-9563137-06 (Pictured: front cover of book)
State of the Nation reaches across generations to bring together 30 Zimbabwean poets in the first dedicated anthology for over two decades. In Zimbabwe, the art of conversation has become steadily harder, paralysed by political wrangling. Unasked questions, unstated views, unattainable dreams and unfulfilled promises have all been part of the formulae of a failed government. But through this decline the driving need for self-expression has remained, and found an opening on the page. The poets in this anthology burst out with a certainty and an urgency which scream it must be told!
Zimbabwean poetry over the decades has been a way of capturing the nation-state coming into being with all its inadequacies, prejudices and ecstatic self-discoveries by poets when they see their individual selves as unique prisms of all that constitute either colonial Rhodesia or post-colonial Zimbabwe. – Nhamo Mhiripiri & J. Tsitsi Mutiti Place an order today at www.conversationpoetry.co.uk/stateofthenation