Landmark collection of female poets

HARARE – Zimbabwean poetry has been largely a choir of male voices. The absence of women is too visible in KZ Muchemwas Zimbabwean Poetry in English (1978), Musaemura Zimunya and Mudereri Kadhanis And Now the Poets Speak (1982), Flora Veit-Wilds Patterns of Poetry in Zimbabwean Poetry (1988) and more recently Jane Morris Inwasa Poetry (2008). The agenda of this book is to give women their voices as the editor Menna Elfyn outlines in her preface, this book goes some way in redressing this imbalance.

I read the book with so much relish. It is an empowering book in many ways. In poetry as well as in the other artistic fields, the Zimbabwean woman is often restricted to a subordinate role as a muse, confidant and comforter. This book brings a refreshing insight as the four poets Ethel Kabwato, Fungai Machirori, Joice Shereni and Blessing Musariri reach out to many dreams. The book is rich in the variety of expression drawing on different styles. The themes are very much wide-ranging and incisive.

What is remarkably interesting about the poetry is the auto-biographical element, which is often central to womens poetry as it allows them to express their suffering, pain and deferred dreams. But in Sunflowers in Your Eyes, the poetry is celebrating a life that despite its hardships and injustice is often happy. It is an expression of injustice but also a celebratory expression of life. Ethel Kabwato is the most political in the book as she tackles the difficult subjects that have come to define what has been dubbed The Zimbabwe crisis. Despite being the youngest, Fungai Machiroris poetry is full of yearning, self-exploration, and a search for answers to questions relating to her identity as a born free.

Joice Shereni writes more about personal relationships and relationships with the larger society. Blessing Musariris assured poems are of resilience, of journeying away because as she asks in Holding on, Everybody has moved on/What (are) you doing standing still? Hers is a more daring poetry that challenges us to alter our perceptions and our minds. The four young women have proven beyond doubt that Zimbabwean women can write poetry. Sunflowers in Your Eyes will considerably increase the depth and breadth of our knowledge of ourselves and a constant reminder of the redefining of those selves. It is a very personal and yet political collection.