African Writers Bureau

A vision is something that sticks with you. I am not sure at what age a human being can relinquish his vision. I have a sad story about how a person keeps his/her vision. Let me write it in short for your own consumption. It is about my father. He was a very successful farmer. When we grew up we lived on farming, in the communal lands. I was the oldest son, living with my parents. I am not saying that I was the oldest son by birth. Fathers do confide with their children. Sadly, my father had developed poor eyesight when he was in his late 60s. When he got a round the seventies, he was completely blind. That was sad and painful to me. In his state of blindness, one day he called me and talked to me. That was one of his last sessions with me. Eventually, he passed away. Sad though. The issue I am talking about is that of vision. When he called me he told me of his vision. He said that once he regained his sight, (he had the faith), he would construct a new dam at ...

Today, I want to write about creating content for poetry. I have had the chance to study and practise a number of genres, such as poetry, prose and plays. I also enjoy listening to music. As you may know, music and poetry have something in common. In fact, poetry can be turned into music but the issue to be assessed is whether a singer can vocalise the words. Poetry content should be refined and defined. You cannot write about everything you know about a particular topic. If you want to write about everything regarding a topic or subtopic, then go for an article. With poetry, you simply choose one angle of a topic and concentrate on that. Poetry is not about length, it is about creating a complete picture of something. You can create a complete picture using a few words, a hundred words etc. Average poems range around 10 to 45 lines. It is best to go for average poems. Very long poems create the problem of repetition and complication. For a topic or subtopic, you can write do...

Previously, I wrote about poetry being a genre of patterns. Today I write about two more things to remember about poetry. Poetry is a simple genre to write once you know the basics. It should not be complicated as people would like to think. Poetry is about capturing the feelings of the readers and creating mental images. With poetry, you can write about anything, as long as you are able to create mental images and capturing the readers' feeling. How can you create mental pictures? Use words to create mental pictures. So that as the reader goes through the poem, he/she envisions what is happening or what the object or artefact looks like.  Poetry is like painting a picture. Portray the picture vividly and you are done. With painting, you use brushes and paint to create the images. Here you use words to create the images. You have to use concrete words, words that create pictures in other people's minds. Look at this short stanza I saw him, a giant of a man, standi...

Basics about poetry In this series of articles, I will give you short tips about writing poetry. I will not write things that are complicated, nor will I write long paragraphs.  I am someone interested only with basics. If you have your contributions based on my article point them out. Poetry is about patterns and rhythm This is something you should understand. When writing a poem you are creating patterns and rhythms. However, you should also be communicating something to your readers. Patterns are shown by how the poem looks like. For example, one pattern is to have every stanza of a poem having the same number of lines. Each stanza may have four lines, for example. The other pattern is on the length of the lines. Craft your lines to have similar lengths. The other pattern could be an enjambment, where one a sentence starts from one line and ends into another line. So, when you write poems, be conscious of the patterns you create. Poets like things th...

For a very long period of time, I believed that one cannot earn from poetry for a number of reasons. First, publishing companies are no longer interested in publishing poetry books. Why? This is because there are a few people who buy them. To understand what I mean let me ask you a question. How many poetry books have you bought this year? If you have bought two or more congratulation. If you have not bought any book, then you can understand that many others are not buying poetry books. People now read poetry online. Publishing houses now concentrate on publishing academic books. A few companies that publish poetry books, will ask you to pay half-down or more of the publishing cost. And how many of us can do that? With these statistics, only a few dedicated poets keep on writing poetry because they enjoy doing it. However, we always want to see our work published by a reputable company. Have I sounded too pessimistic? I am writing from experience. I have interacted with s...

I have never thought of writing a bit about myself until one of my new partners gave me that suggestion.  So I waste no time, I have to do that. However, in this article, I will provide only the facts related to my writing career. Background information I grew up liking reading and writing poems. Apart from this I equally enjoyed debating. I started serious writing in 1994 when I was doing my teacher education. This means by 2019, I have been writing for 24 years, week by week. My main genres of writing are poetry, articles and short stories. But my heart is with poetry. Qualifications related to writing In a bid to improve my writing capabilities, I studied a number of courses. First, I did a Diploma in Education, from the University of Zimbabwe. Thereafter, I worked as a teacher for nine years. I also did a poetry writing course, that lasted me four years, from the Writers’ Bureau ( United Kingdom). After completing the poetry course, I undertook the Comprehensive Wr...