Malawian poet Ndongolera Mwangupili’s work has received international acclaim and will form part of the anthology of African poems titled “Afrocentric” in a book scheduled for release on 7th September this year.
The four poems Africa, Letter to a comrade, How dare you and My African face got the nod after a series of rigorous selection processes which lasted for months.
The poems will now form part of a print anthology of new poems from Africa and a platform through which new voices from Africa would be heard.
In an interview on Monday, Mwangupili confirmed the development which came through official communication from one of the project’s coordinators Akor Emmanuel Oche who notified him of his selection.
“The Royallite Publishers Limited, East Africa invited submissions for an anthology of contemporary African poets. We were asked to send a total of five best poems about Africa, her people, issues, food and life,” Mwangupili said.
He said as writer, the recognition that his work has received can help spring Malawian writing and art into an international platform where artists can learn a lot from such kind of exposure.
“There has been an outcry after the post-democracy writers where there has been less exposure of Malawian artists internationally. It was as if the democratic era had killed creativity. So I really hold this as a milestone,” said Mwangupili who has also recently published with international online publications and journals in USA and India.
“On a personal level it shows that I am maturing as a writer. The future that I waited for as a writer is here with me,” he said.
In his poem ‘Africa’, Mwangupili appreciates the uniqueness of African beauty, ‘Letter to a comrade’ is a political poem challenging a comrade to be cunning to survive in the political struggle, ‘How dare you’ is an elegy to a fallen son of Africa while ‘My African face’ celebrates the African people.
Mwangupili, a passionate reader and writer, works with the Ministry of Education as senior inspector of schools and is also general secretary of Malawi Union of Academic and Nonfiction Authors (MUANA) and he believes that literature is about life which needs to be reflected in a writer’s life. (By Brian Itai, Mana)