Article
Editorial: 20 January, 2004
January 18, 2006
And, as his fellow-poet {id="5752" title="Charles Mungoshi"} writes in a {id="5732" title="reflection"} on Chingono: "There is no doubt that he will one day achieve the recognition that he deserves in Zimbabwe. That he has been largely ignored is due in part to his own humility, but also his refusal to bend to the winds of rhetoric or to engage with the great transitory winds of political change. He looks at the world around him, and he tells it as it is."
We at PIW, and our Zimbabwean editor Irene Staunton in particular, would like to hear what you think of Chingono’s diary. We are also interested in your response to the Zimbabwean poetry in general on PIW, which perhaps tends to be more overtly political than poetry from other countries on this site. Please feel free to send us your comments and feedback at zimbabwe@poetryinternational.org or info@poetryinternational.org.
On PIW, we regularly publish diaries of poets who describe an out-of-the-ordinary week in their lives, at a festival, for instance. Daily life, after all, is predictable and boring – we can all guess what an average day in the office or at one’s writing desk looks like. Or can we? This month we’ve got a diary describing a perfectly average week in a country that is becoming more out-of-the-ordinary practically by the hour. Zimbabwean poet Julius Chingono, who works as a rock-blasting contractor and is a pastor in the Tsitsi dzaMwari Apostolic Church, tells us about a regular working week.
{id="5758" title="Chingono"}, who had never read a diary in his life, let alone written one, provides us with a rare and humorous glimpse of the hardships of daily life in Zimbabwe. His {id="384" title="diary"}, covering one week in December, is oddly reminiscent of the novels of Magnus Mills in its attention to the daily grind of hard, manual labor, as well as in its sense of the absurd, and its subtle irony. But it is also the same understatement, quiet observation and matter of fact tone that can be found in his poems. In an {id="5727" title="essay"} on Zimbabwean poetry, Kizito Z. Muchemwa remarked that "Chingono's voice is one of decency, peace, charity, and the will to survive and construct a sense of community and nation." His words apply equally to this diary. And, as his fellow-poet {id="5752" title="Charles Mungoshi"} writes in a {id="5732" title="reflection"} on Chingono: "There is no doubt that he will one day achieve the recognition that he deserves in Zimbabwe. That he has been largely ignored is due in part to his own humility, but also his refusal to bend to the winds of rhetoric or to engage with the great transitory winds of political change. He looks at the world around him, and he tells it as it is."
We at PIW, and our Zimbabwean editor Irene Staunton in particular, would like to hear what you think of Chingono’s diary. We are also interested in your response to the Zimbabwean poetry in general on PIW, which perhaps tends to be more overtly political than poetry from other countries on this site. Please feel free to send us your comments and feedback at zimbabwe@poetryinternational.org or info@poetryinternational.org.
© Corine Vloet
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