ZIMBABWE Media Commission chief executive Tafataona Mahoso has rekindled his love for poetry with a collection that touches on a raft of issues, including love for humanity and the environment.
BY TAFADZWA KACHIKO
The publication, Rupise: Love, Separation and Renewal, comes 29 years after his anthology Footprints About the Bantustan.
Mahoso told NewsDay Life & Style last week that he has since submitted the book for the 2019 edition of the National Arts Merit Awards set for February next year.
“I have always had interest in the arts and I can also make music instruments. My first job in Zimbabwe was as the director of the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe, which at that time was called the National Arts Foundation of Rhodesia, and my first poetry book was published in 1989,” he said.
“My passion is to write, whether the industry is thriving or not. I have not published any poetry book since 1989, because I was committed to other things.”
The renowned academic said the title, Rupise, which means a hot spring in the Ndau dialect, carries a lot of symbolism.
“There is a lot of symbolism in the book. It’s a book of love, but this love is not just the usual concept. Rupise records and celebrates the power of woman’s presence in man’s life. It equates the overwhelming power of woman’s presence and love with the ability of the earth, as place, space, depth, gravity and extends an African child’s language, identity and voice,” Mahoso said.
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“It’s a celebration not only of women, but their relationship with water and the land. Water represents the love of life; it enables plans to germinate and grow.” Mahoso said even the land reform in Zimbabwe was a struggle for water.
“It’s not like the people who struggled to liberate Zimbabwe didn’t have land, but they had been pushed to dry lands,” he said.
Mahoso said the collection also deals with the subject of Zimbabweans who returned home after a Diaspora experience, hence the inclusion of “separation” and “reunion” in the title.
“Part of the stories are in recognition of the experience of Zimbabweans who went outside to study and came back home. That’s why the book is titled Rupise: Love, Separation and Reunion. To some extent, it is a homecoming book that celebrates a successful diaspora experience,” he explained.
Mahoso said he would organise a public reading of the poems as he did with his first anthology.
