Gather the Children

Batsirai E. Chigama

 

  • Unknown publisher
  • Harare
  • 2017
  • English

Forthcoming

Synopsis

Batsirai E. Chigama is a mesmeric performer whose generous and powerful poetry has been inspired by a range of influences. In this debut collection, she is at once deeply personal and passionately engaged in the political turmoil of her country. This selection of poems is about the slipperiness of truth, the weight of forgetting, but despite the pain of displacement Chigama finds heart in coming together, in gathering, in celebration. She does not force conclusions, or cover up contradictions. She trusts language and lets words play. And language rewards this trust.

Review

Gather the Children is anchored in the personal. The escapist themes in the collection are blended with intimate reflections: mournful, elegiac verses about death, immigrant life in South Africa, endemic corruption, betrayal. Ultimately, Chigama is not a poet of somberness and brokenness, but hope. - Tinashe Mushakavanhu

Author

Batsirai Esther Chigama is a prolific poet and one of Zimbabwe's most well known Spoken Word artists. She is one of the female pioneers of the country's modern day spoken word craft.