Chirere’s not so ‘useless book’
If you have had the opportunity to dine with Chirere, or bump into him on your way to the car park or at the Book Café, then you will know that it’s rare for a conversation about trees, birds, rain or Second Street not to attract a witty analogy from the ever-humorous Chirere.
“Bhuku Risina Basa Nokuti Rakanyorwa Masikati” is not a useless book. It’s just that it’s author loves witty titles, like “Somewhere in this Country”; “Maize”; “Tadamuhwa”; “Presidential Goggles”, “RojaraBaba Biggie”; “Tudiki-diki” and so on.
The title leaves you asking this question: who in their right frame of mind considers, after very serious deliberations, “Bhuku Risina Basa”, as a marketable title for a collection of poems? The answer to this question is simple: Chirere.
If you have had the opportunity to dine with Chirere, or bump into him on your way to the car park or at the Book Café, then you will know that it’s rare for a conversation about trees, birds, rain or Second Street not to attract a witty analogy from the ever-humorous Chirere.
But underneath that humour is a very serious reflection of life, of ideas, of the human condition of smiling, crying, suffering, celebrating, praying, eating and dying.
I think Chirere’s writing is an answer to this question: after a consideration of everything that life gives us, how can we make ourselves laugh?
How can the good and the bad of life be hammered into verse for the purpose of redeeming laughter from this life we are living?
So right from the title, the invitation to smile and laugh is extended to the reader by this poet.
What’s more interesting is that the words that are deployed by the poet in the crafting of the poems in this collection assume the mood that is driving the poet to the extent that in his hands, the words assume another life that is far removed from the one that is lexically associated with them.
This is not something that is easy to muster. Words can be recalcitrant sometimes.
Remember Dambudzo Marechera writing about “hair-raising panga duels” with words? This is because words have personalities, hierarchies and associations (think of WhatsApp groups here). However, even the word that occupies the lowest rung in the hierarchies of words assumes an aura that gives it an opportunity to create a new identity and assume a new position in the hierarchichal order of words.
Words are sometimes very noisy and arrogant. In that mad scramble for the attention of the author, there are some words that get chosen because they look stronger and more beautiful. Others are elbowed out of the way. In that cacophony, it is very easy to leave out the “smaller” word, the humble word, the word whose unassuming stance is wont to make the poet believe that it won’t be able to communicate experience quite sufficiently.
The writing process is indeed a war. I am experiencing my own war right now in the composition of this review. But what I have learnt from Chirere is his indiscriminate and simple choice of words to bring about poetic communication that makes you wonder why great poetry loves to be hidden in simplicity.
Each poem in this collection is a masterpiece.
Every time I read a poem or two from this collection, I am reminded of the words of the late Vimbai Chivaura once upon a lecture: “Poetry is the overflow of emotion captured in moments of tranquillity.”
Indeed, tranquillity is the word we can use to describe this collection.
For instance, in “Nyika Yedu”, the poet communicates his intense love for his country by choosing words which, unlike the sloganeering and affectation of political rhetoric, communicate a deeper understanding of what it means to own a country and to be owned by it.
The persona says, “Tinoda nyika ino neupfumi hwayo hwese. /Kuti tiicheke hafu toisa mukabati. /Todya hafu izvozvi nhasiuno. Imwe hafu toti ndeye mangwana. /Hafu yanhasi toizorabhata zvese nedovi nejamhu. /Tozomira zvedu pavhurandati chiidya. /Tichionekwa nevana vepaseri kuti tiri kuidya.”
You cannot miss the humour in this description of the persona’s love for his own country, but you can also not miss the idyllic communalism in the first person plural “we” that the persona uses.
It’s difficult to access what the poet is expressing here except if you grew up in my village in which Christmas (a once-a-year event) made the act of eating jam/butter/margarine-smeared bread on the verandah or under the mango tree a poetic one.
The pride it conferred on us, the pride of eating bread and knowing that there was more in the house, was short of patriotic.
Then in that same poem, Chirere plays around with that issue of Zimbabwean-English that I played around with once upon a review: “Tinoitondera nemisodzi chaiyo nyika ino. /Nekuti yakatida tisati tatomboziva kuti tisu vana ani. /Tikaidawo tisati taziva kuti chinonzi rudo chii./ Yakati pamazita anosekwa kwese kwatinoenda. /Vana Lovemore, Rosewita, Does matter na Evernice. /Hatiseke nekuti tinoziva zvaanoreva mukusareva kwawo.” Do you see how the sincerity of the persona is actually part of the humour here?
Then there is another one. I love to call it “The Tinashe Muchuri Freestyle” although the actual title is “Tine Hurombo (Kuna Tinashe Muchuri)”. I don’t know why this poem was dedicated to Tinashe Muchuri. I have never asked because I like imagining scenarios.
Probably Muchuri likes kuva mushamarari pamagungano emhando dzakasiyana-siyana, and during this particular gathering things do not go according to plan so the mushamarari or mudanidziri has to improvise: “Tine hurombo/ nekuti nonokei kutanga./ Pane zvanga zvanetsa, imi we-e./ Ndine hurombo/nekuti nyama yacho inetu jecha./Saka moto tsenga maka chenjera./Tine hurombo/ kuti huku yamakamirira ichiri kutandaniswa./Saka sadza iro ngarimbodzoka kuno.” Well, I wouldn’t want to be in Muchuri’s shoes there.
Sometimes, because of the ability of words to assume new potential, Chirere’s poems communicate more deeply than meets the mind.
For example, the poem “Chipikiri” aestheticises the systematic penetration of a nail into some piece of wood, but the deeper meaning may be found in the cliché, “nail on the coffin”?
Writes Chirere: “Chipikiri chichienda, chichidzama./Chichinoita basa ravamwe zvavo./Chichisiya ngoma inonaka ichingorira/ chichi asiya mabhebhi, maruva nema keke…”
I am sure this beautiful poem is about death, but then you can never tell with Chirere.
After going through this collection, I assure you, you will tell me that this is not a useless book.
This is a very serious collection of poems whose merit lies in their simplicity and depth.
Bhuku iri rine basa chero rakanyorwa masikati.