Poet

Tariro Ndoro

(Zimbabwe, 1991)

Biography

Tariro Ndoro, whose forthcoming collection explores themes of language, identity and dislocation, is a poet and short story writer. Her poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies including 2015 Best New Poets Anthology, Kotaz, The Kalahari Review, New Coin Poetry, New Contrast, Oxford Poetry, Puerto del Sol and the Zimbolicious Poetry Anthology. She was shortlisted for the 2018 Babishai Niwe Poetry Prize.

Tariro earned a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Rhodes University in 2015 and participated in a digital exchange programme, These Images are Stories in 2017. She has participated in Page Poetry readings hosted in Harare.

PIW is proud to present two new poems – including videos of the poet reading them – and her musings on ‘Four Roads’ and the town that inspired it:

In my first week in Grahamstown, I’d already been told that the place was a one street town. “There’s nothing past High Street”, someone told me. I later found out that this wasn’t quite true – that the majority of shops in High Street had white owners but the shops beyond Hill Street belonged to African, Indian and Coloured folk...

Since writing 'Four Roads', the name of the town has been changed to Makhanda, in keeping with the new South Africa, but I believe it will be a while before some of the negative ideologies (racism, sexism and xenophobia) are completely eradicated.

Read: On the Genesis of Four Roads