Zimbabwe Book Publishers Awards 2005: Literature in English – First Prize

Over the last three years, five collections of short writings have been published by two publishers: Short Writings from Bulawayo I, II and III from amaBooks and Writing Still and Writing Now from Weaver Press. This piece focuses on the Short Writings from Bulawayo series.

Many pieces in these anthologies document the effects of the crisis in Zimbabwe in stories and poetry. Writers are reflecting what they see happening around them day after day - the human suffering resulting from government policies. This is particularly pronounced in the most recent of these collections, Short Writings from Bulawayo III.

The effects of Operation Murambatsvina or ‘clear out rubbish’, where hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless, are seen through the eyes of those at the receiving end of the destruction in the work of Diana Charsley, in her short story Forgiveness, as their homes are razed to the ground.

It is not only the newer writers who record the present moment. Established writers like John Eppel and Albert Nyathi document, through poetry, record the destruction of communities and vendors losing their livelihoods. John Eppel in Sonnet with One Unstated Line:

‘Hear the cry of hornbills lost in yards
of rubble and rags, to split the ears
of those who stand and watch; and the guards
unguarded, hammering, hammering.’