BOOK REVIEW: Hope Masike’s ‘Ask Me Again’

As you turn the page on Hope Masike’s new body of work, where she delves into written poetry as an art form, you can see her sitting on a window sill watching the world go by, pen ensconced between the index finger and thumb and a cup of coffee in the other hand.

She sees tragedy around her and reflects on the struggles of the world in the context of her own. That is the summary of As Me Again, her book of poetry, a debut,

Sex, infidelity, societal pressures, marriage (or not being married) are all treated, served in a feature format.

She has a pregnant entrance that sets up this anthology well. It is a poem called The graveyard of those who forgot to live. It paves the way for collection about lost moments, confusion, perhaps and who knows, in terms of reference.

Even in brevity such as in T for Toy, she is dramatic, expectant and emotionally pungent.

Hope tackles irony in They are all paid for and Bastard. In both, she makes observations from whom the muse is life, its experiences, the kind from both conversations in one’s head or late nights over befuddling stuff with friends and familiar strangers.

It’s sometimes a crash course on dancing around the beautifully absurd as in What if.

It gets grim, It wasn’t rape raises the ire. It makes for deep thinking about moments, written in an interesting patter, dripping as it finally gets to soft spike at the end, blunt too.

The 36 poems are dedicated to Anesu Masike who was given only thirty-six years on this earth. She also says it is to all women who live (or are trying to live) life remembering that there isn’t a spare one. She also adds all men who put the effort into understanding this our world of women and all those searching, chiselling rocks and chasing dreams.

And that is where the crux of it all is. That deep introspection about self and the world around. We placed her on the window sill watching the world dance rings around itself. She only understands it through the rhythm of her book, written in what bounced between narrative and a rhythmic, musical style.

That she is a gifted lyricist is without a shadow of a doubt. The transition to poetry is an interesting one because it means curbing the enthusiasm to write as if it is music. She makes a fair shake of it here and succeeds for the most part.

As Me Again by Hope Masike is out Friday 7 February 2020.