HOUSE OF HUNGER POETRY SLAM: ‘Lend a Hand, Speak the Word’

The Book Café, Harare, Zimbabwe

Sat 03 July 2010, 2-5pm

Harare’s Book Café will be blazing this winter Saturday 03 July from 2-5pm, with ‘hot’ poetry at the monthly ‘House of Hunger Poetry Slam’, which gives poets a platform to express themselves freely and explicitly through the spoken word.

The theme for this months’ slam is “Lend a Hand, Speak the Word”, in commemoration of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, and poets are invited to think and express their thoughts on the topic.

The popular event at The Book Café has grown tremendously over the last few years, and has proved to be the best poetry platform in Zimbabwe that has supported upcoming and established poets to enhance their poetry skills by giving them consistent space to practice performance poetry and articulate issues affecting their lives and communities.

The slam also seeks to empower poets and guide them to valuable networks locally, regionally and internationally.  This month the Poetry Slam welcomes guest South African poet ‘The Lazarus Man’, May winner of Johannesburg’s new poetry programme, which has grown out of the Zimbabwean slam through sister arts organization African Synergy Trust in the ‘City of Gold’.

“The House of Hunger Poetry Slam provides a vibrant platform for performance poetry with soul-searching, hot and fiery or peaceful soothing poems which are a joy to the ear. The artists are very creative, feeding off the energy of each other, and presenting a highly enjoyable afternoon of poetry” said Extra- Blessings Kuchera Pamberi Trust Projects Officer.  “Around 25 poets take part

each month, judged by the audience and their peers, and the interaction is lively!”

The House of Hunger Poetry Slam is a project by Pamberi Trust, an arts development organization in Harare that runs development programmes for music, poetry, theatre, information technology, gender and literature.  The poetry slam is supported by leading poets of the country, including Julius Chingono and Chirikure Chirikure, and has also seen the rise of great young poets of Zimbabwe such as Sam ‘Cde Fatso’ Monro,  ‘Outspoken’ Makawa, who are now well known beyond the borders of Zimbabwe, performing in South Africa, Mozambique, Swaziland, other parts of the African continent and even as far as the UK and US, and the emergence of women poets Aura Kawanzaruwa, and Batsirai Chigama from Pamberi’s Sistaz Open Mic programme to national and regional platforms.

Some of these poets have successfully fused their ‘spoken word’ with music and leading music groups in this genre include ‘Chabvondoka’ and ‘The Essence’, who also support the popular spoken word event ‘Mashoko’ at The Mannenberg Jazz Club once a month.

Offshoots of the poetry slam include the monthly Story-Telling Open Mic, and the fast-rapping celebration of hiphop, known as The Circle, at the two Fife Avenue venues.