Mother is relearning
to pick the running stitches
on the blanket of my unsure life
covering the shame and regret
crocheting beautiful shades
of browns, greens, mustards
I call these hope
She folds the yarn and bends
love until it fits in nooks
long forgotten and depraved
Mother is weaving me stitch
by stitch, making everything
wholesome, again.
Batsirai Chigama (Zimbabwe) is a performer, poet, literary activist, and social commentator. City of Asylum described her work as “surprising, shocking, and skilfully deliberate work,” and “a breath-taking embodiment of grief.”
Chigama’s debut collection, “Gather The Children,” won Outstanding First Creative Published Book at the National Arts Merit Awards in 2019. In the same year she was an honorary fellow at the International Writing Programme (IWP) at Iowa University.
Batsirai is passionate about providing alternative narratives to those featured in mainstream media and her work with young people has taken her as far as Denmark and USA, performing and facilitating creative writing and spoken word workshops in schools.
Chigama’s debut collection, “Gather The Children,” won Outstanding First Creative Published Book at the National Arts Merit Awards in 2019. In the same year she was an honorary fellow at the International Writing Programme (IWP) at Iowa University. In 2021 she released her second poetry collection which won the NAMA Outstanding Poetry Book Award in 2022.
Batsirai is passionate about providing alternative narratives to those featured in mainstream media and her work with young people has taken her as far as Denmark and USA, performing and facilitating creative writing and spoken word workshops.