Stray

by Bernard Farai Matambo, Kwame Dawes (Foreword)

Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Zimbabwean writer Bernard Farai Matambo’s poems in Stray favor a prose-shaped line as they uncover the contradictory impulses in search of emotional and intellectual truth. Stray not only captures the essence of identity but also eloquently articulates the pain of displacement and speaks to the vulnerability of Africans who have left their native continent. This collection delicately examines the theme of migration—migration in a literal, geographic sense; migration of language from one lexicon to another; migration of a poem toward prose—and the instability of the creative experience in the broader sense.
 

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2018

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Every reading experience is subjective, of course, but poetry is even more so: if something about a poet’s voice or style doesn’t connect with you, there’s little hope of you appreciating the work. I read another from the University of Nebraska’s African Poetry Book Series, Logotherapy by Mukoma Wa Ngugi, earlier this year and preferred it.

My two main problems with Stray, the debut collection by the Zimbabwean poet Matambo, were the form – an occasional prose poem interspersed among verse in a collection is fine, but almost all of these poems are printed as prose paragraphs, which makes you question whether they’re poems at all, rather than essays or flash fictions – and the stereotypical metaphors. It seems it’s acceptable for a Black author to use self-deprecating imagery of apes and slaves, but Matambo obsessively returns to these all-too-familiar derogatory metaphors, though I couldn’t see what they added (e.g. “My brother was the ape instead me”; “Always I am a slave, half-ape, half child”).

I kept searching for profundity but had the disorienting experience of thinking, “Oh, that’s an interesting line,” and then, upon reading it a second or third time, realizing I didn’t actually think it meant much at all. I got more out of Kwame Davis’s introduction than the poems themselves.

Favorite line: “Iowa has been our dessert. We are off now west on the gravy train, our lungs beating virginal across the open states. Where did they lynch men like me for gazing too long at white women? // Everywhere.”

[Krystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this evocative debut collection of poetry, Bernard Farai Matambo interrogates such notions as identity and belonging, as the complexity inherent in migration are insightfully deconstructed.

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stray by Bernard Farai Matambo is the winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets.  Matambo, born and raised in Zimbabwe, is visiting assistant professor creative writing at Oberlin College. He received his BA from Oberlin and an MFA from Brown University, where his writing received both the Beth Lisa Feldman Award for Fiction and the Matthew Assatly Award.  

Stray is prose formed poetry.  The words bring complex images and feelings from youth through adulthood.  Growing up in Zimbabwe, the poet has a strong connection to Christianity.  It is a child's version but plays an important role in his youth.  Although the book may be the same there is something fresh in the belief.  It seems new compared to the established Western views.  But, later he makes a discovery in his minister's Bible ("Holy Ghost").  Religion then drifts into adolescence ("Catechism"):

Remind me again, dear love, of that time when the world was as young as we were and I was lit bright with urges, light as the shroud Christ yielded when he gave up his tomb, sick of sleeping alone and dreading the eternity of it, when he sought himself some company. Of this no poetry shall come. 

There is an inclusion of a poem of a man mentioned by Matambo's father.  Ota Benga was a Congolese man who became a human zoo exhibit in St. Louis and the Bronx Zoo.  There is much on the meaning of identity and freedom -- exile and return.  In the poet's Preamble to the section Stray he writes:

We forgot the rooted scent of our dreams. And because we forgot the rooted scent of our dreams, we forgot they could flower. No, not anymore; no longer could everyone read the coming air for the rain. 

Later works reflect on turmoil in Africa.  The ghettos and the hardships are expressed in his poetry.  In one poem the death of youth is reflected on and in another, leaders are mentioned by name.  "Requiem: In the Case Regarding My Brother" is a powerful and moving poem of internal struggle. 

The forward of this collection is provided by Kwame Dawes and provides extra insight into the poems and their meanings in proper context.  A well-done collection of poetry that may not fit into the mold of traditional Western poetry, but is vividly written poetry, nonetheless. 

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book. The poems are often layered but accessible, lyrical but freely narrative as well. I felt like I was learning something new with each line and each poem. There are so many moving images and moving poems in this book, but the one that moved me the most was the one on Amadou Diallo, an African immigrant killed by NYPD officers nearly 20 years ago in the Bronx. It is a must read. Matambo is a new and critical poetic voice in African Literature.

[Lily McKenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5