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Welcome to Zimbabwean poetry - September 2005
January 18, 2006
We are honoured at Poetry International to be the first to publish three previously unpublished poems by Dambudzo Marechera. They were written and given to Bettina Schmidt in 1986 when she was living in Zimbabwe. All three poems moreover are accompanied by a copy of the original typed on Marechera’s Olivetti typewriter, displayed alongside the text.
In addition, we are publishing an extra article by Dr Bettina Schmidt, originally written in 1988, which puts into context Marechera’s new poems, and discusses the topos of the writer as inside-outsider or as Doppelgaenger. For Marechera, art and writing could never be subordinated to political goals. As Dr Schmidt remarks, “He thus remains the uncompromising inside-outsider – but as a black insider.”
© Irene Staunton
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