Mitu’s Spice Tour

included in Eight New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set

Akashic Books

Although Blessing Musariri is from Zimbabwe and still lives there, the poems in this collection defy any kind of nationalized categorization. They are not rooted in one place but instead have a global reach expressed through localized incidents, experiences and sensations. Her poems range from negotiations of the heart and meditations on loss and home, to the textured landscapes of memory, and the unsettling disquiet of violence, both physical and psychological.

Bernardine Evaristo, from the preface

Reeds

We cannot be men’s wives
who want a limp weed to hold
through rushing waters
for their watching pleasure,
wondering if we will break
in the swollen current,
debating how tight to hold
and how long.

In the harmony of muddy banks
we are straight and still,
bowing if they bend us,
but careful not to break

Blessing Musariri, “Reeds”