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Award-winning poet Tinashe Tafirenyika is the debut artist in our new partnership with Gourd of Consciousness poetry in which we will showcase new work every Thursday.
Here is her poem:
Hush Now Child
Hush now child
Clasp your hand about my wrist
If you are rustic, then you are wild
Feel the echo of my heartbeat
You and I are in sync
Don’t let the makeup and the stilettos fool you
They can come off faster than you can blink
The facade will fall only for you
The city is loud but monotone
Stop trying to match pitch
You and I exist in diatone
Our melody is a foetus in breach
Some nights I wish we could cradle so much flame
That we no longer see the shadows
Your lips would (need) mouth only my name
And we’d figure the rest out as we’d go
But I can’t because you can’t (won’t?)
And I kinda want what you want
To sow, take it slow
To believe in the days after tomorrow
One night can’t nurture a plant
It is days and sunshine that make roses grow
I want what you want
Let’s plant an oak tree, and watch it grow
About Tinashe Tafirenyika
Tinashe Tafirenyika is a performance poet from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe who first performed at The Book Café Harare in 2013. She was a regular at the Sistaz Open Mic and House Of Hunger Poetry Slam events and she went on to perform at various festivals including Shoko Festival, Intwasa Arts Festival, Vrystaat Literature Festival and Word n’ Sound Youth Festival.
Tinashe was the winner of the 2016 Shakespeare ko Bulawayo Poetry Slam, which was part of the British Council celebrations of William Shakespeare’s 400 year legacy. In 2017 Tinashe became the first woman, and the youngest person so far, to be awarded the Outstanding Poet Award at the National Arts Merit Awards (NAMA) in Zimbabwe. This was followed by a Bulawayo Arts Award for Spoken Word Poetry in the same year. In 2018 she was awarded a second NAMA for her video “Sarah Baartman” which reached thousands of people on social media.
Her work draws heavily from her life and various themes are present in her poems, including politics, identity, and gender. Tinashe believes in art as a means for inspiring change and whilst in university she worked extensively with Jibilika Dance Trust in their high school outreach programme for the prevention of the transmission of HIV among the youth. She was also one of the artists who performed at the first Woman Scream event in Zimbabwe in support of victims of gender based violence. In 2018 she worked with Nhimbe Trust on a HIVOS funded project to encouraging freedom of expression and she has been working with Intwasa Arts Festival as a mentor for 100 girls 100 voices project that tackles issues of child marriages and children’s rights through poetry. Tinashe is also a columnist for the Nigerian press Konya Shamsrumi’s poetry blog.
When not performing poetry, Tinashe Tafirenyika practices as a medical laboratory scientist in her home-town and consumes copious amounts of coffee at the local art gallery café.
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