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Ipikai Poetry Journal

The Story of Zimbabwe in Poetry

ISSUE 6 | JULY 2024

www.ipikai.org

Issue Editor

Ethel Irene Kabwato

Consulting Editors

Tinashe Muchuri

Thabani H. Moyo

Editorial Board

Tinashe Mushakavanhu
Togara Muzanenhamo
Mgcini Nyoni
Peggie Shangwa
– – Full Team – – 

Admin

Project Management
Fungai Tichawangana

Events & Programming
Batsirai Chigama

Website Updates
Stuart Moyo [Artist Dynamix]

The Ipikai Poetry Journal
is a project of the 
Zimbabwe Poets Society.
Established 2022

BEHIND THE SCENES

A Note About Issue 6

This issue of Ipikai was guest edited by Ethel Kabwato.

Born in Mutare, Zimbabwe, Ethel Irene Kabwato trained as a secondary school teacher and holds a BA in Media Studies. She is featured in important anthologies that have shaped literary spaces in Africa and the world such as New Daughters of Africa (Myriad Press), Sunflowers in Your Eyes (Cinnamon Press), Poetry International Website (Netherlands), Writing Free ( Weaver Press), and Ghetto Diary (Zimbabwe Publishing House) an anthology that was selected as a set book for Advanced-level literature students in Zimbabwe. Her poetry is included in Between Two Rocks, (ed. Ben Gaydos, Flint University) in collaboration with the Zimbabwe Cultural Centre in Detroit (ZCCD). In August 2023, Kabwato was the ZCCD/Litfest research writer in residence in Detroit.

FROM THE ISSUE EDITOR

Womanhood: A Celebration of Women

‘But she looked at me, or so I felt, to speak for her. She depended on me for a voice.’ 
Zora Neale Hurston

Ethel Kabwato‘For all women, without whom…’

Women have often found themselves in the unenviable position of being second-class citizens. 

Five Divisions

If I had to name this poetry collection, I would go back to the books of an author I discovered in my last two years of high school in the late 1980s, Helen Van Slyke

Because of the diversity of the poetry in this issue, I would divide the collection into five sections, giving each one a title inspired by Van Slyke: 

    1. Public Smiles, Private Tears (poetry on the futility of marriage/marital abuse/),
    2. The Heart Listens (on barrenness and loss/rape),
    3. Sisters and Strangers (womanhood/sisterhood/solidarity),
    4. A Necessary Woman (women as providers/carers/survivors/feminists/mothers/women of resilience and character) and
    5. No Love Lost (poems about women who love and fight for their men despite the abuse that they go through). 


Helen Van Slyke knew and understood women.
Despite her short life as an author (She died at the age of 59), her books offer a timeless celebration of women and highlight the universal struggles that they go through.  

The Realities of Womanhood

This latest issue of the Ipikai Poetry Journal brings you emerging and established poets whose poetry comes from the depth of their hearts as they celebrate womanhood. In their diversity, the poems speak to the future. 

Most of the words written by the poets about their mothers, lovers, sisters, friends, grandmothers, aunts and teachers echo the spoken words of women they know, women who did not get a chance to write their own stories. 

All the poets focus on the realities of a woman’s situation. Women are portrayed as providers, carers, daughters, wives, helpers, creators, enablers, victims, victors. The list is inexhaustible. 

The poetry covers a diverse array of themes such as barrenness, male strength, powerlessness, sexuality, loneliness, rejection, desertion, exclusion, grief, motherhood, fear, etc. 

What the Poets Wrote

Tariro Mwendamberi,  Batsirai Chigama, and Chipo Mukoki’s poetry reflects on the disturbing issue of barrenness and the trauma it evokes. All three poets refer to childlessness as grief.  

Issue 6 Front Page Image - Chipo Mukoki

Mabuya, Kalukwete and Mukondiwa view marriage as a divine commission. Precity Mabuya explores the issue of infertility but highlights the importance of spiritual guidance in such issues. She warns readers of the dangers of giving birth to the wrong sex! In the poem, A Dress Called Sorry, the poet Dzikamayi Chando discusses grief in a different context of condemnation and exclusion. 

Some of the poems explore the theme of relationships. The reader is made to understand that love can be unspoken and denied. Godess Bvukutwa’s poetry dwells on subtlety. In The Dance, she emphasizes that we are mere actors on the stage of life. 

Obey Chiyangwa’s poem Love and Hurt looks at a woman who chooses to stay in an abusive marriage. The image of a perfect wife is brought out by Vanessa Kalukwete who solemnly makes an appeal; ‘Support me in my gruelling meltdowns of sculpturing me to perfection.’ Marriage is portrayed as an achievement by some poets. 

Oscar Gwiriri’s satirical Haiku explores the relationship between in-laws. Pauline Chirata Mukondiwa demands recognition and respect and she ironically concludes, ‘I am my own man. Self-manned.’  

Male vs Female Views of Womanhood

Most of the male poets submitted poetry that celebrates motherhood. They pay tribute to the women who raised them. However, some women poets seem to view motherhood as a task that has been thrust on their shoulders and denies them the opportunity to achieve their goals. 

Women providers carry the burdens of life although some poets celebrate this hard work as resilience. The women providers may have left for greener pastures and miss the warmth and comfort of home. 

Poetry about young women comes through as a warning. 

The girls are seen as fragile, vulnerable, inexperienced, sexual prey and in need of protection. Therefore, they are warned about the struggles that women face.  Consequently, Tafadzwa Chimwe and Marcilline Badza’s poetry urges women to come together as one and celebrate sisterhood. 

Bringing it all together

Perhaps, the last word belongs to Batsirai Chigama who gathers all the loose ends of womanhood in Yarn Barn and uses words that run through most of the poems by letting Mother ‘weave’, ‘pick up stitch by stitch’ and ‘make everything wholesome again’ or maybe it is the finality in Tafadzwa Chimwe’s poem when she reminds us that because of our oneness, ‘we weave joy’.

Do they not know by now? 
That there is no distinction.
That we have no names.
That she is me and I am her.
That it’s all of us as one.
It’s the women in my life
The women I’m yet to know.
and that we are one…
– Tafadzwa Chimwe

Ethel Irene Kabwato
Harare, July 2024x

ISSUE THEME

Womanhood: A Celebration of Women

At every juncture of our history, women have been at the core of keeping our society grounded and stable.

Consequently, women’s lives, their works and their deeds need to be acknowledged and celebrated.

In this first issue of 2024, Ipikai invited Zimbabwean poets to submit their poems on the theme of womanhood.

Issue editor, Ethel Kabwato, called on poets to “Bring us your images of women as creators, teachers, carers, healers, counsellors, lovers, grandmothers, mothers, daughters, sisters, survivors, nurturers, defenders, champions, leaders, dreamers, providers, friends, activists and heroines; flawed, victorious, tenacious, unyielding, broken, mended, and strong.”

CONTENTS

The Poems

Click on a title to read the poem, or on a name to see all the poems by that poet…