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Welcome to Zimbabwean poetry - January 2004

18 januari 2006
Zimbabwe is a country of poets. Zimbabweans write poetry, speak it and sing it in Shona, Ndebele, Tonga, Shangaan and other minority languages; we have poetry in English, praise, performance, oratorical, and declamatory poetry. Perhaps as many as one in six people writes poetry or takes pleasure from trying to do so.
In this fifth edition of the magazine, we are pleased to introduce {id="5757" title="John Eppel"}, one of Zimbabwe's finest poets whose work should deservedly be better known. His poems reflect, often with taut passion, finely structured lyricism and occasional irony, the ambiguity of growing up in a country that has a divisive and sometimes bitter history. His deep love of the country permeates the questions he raises about being white in a land where colonial arrogance was a primary reason for the liberation war, but where even as a Zimbabwean in an independent country one is often identified as an alien.
© Irene Staunton
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