I enjoy prose poetry and African literature so I was delighted when I offered to review a copy by NetGalley UK and the University of Nebraska Press. Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Matambo's Stray delves deep into a wide-ranging set of issues such as racism, Zimbabwean politics, adultery, religion. One of my favourite poems from this collection is “Ota Benga Returns to the Congo” about a Congolese man who was exhibited in the Bronx Zoo as recently as the early 20th century: “I too wish I could dance myself free./ I have the feeling I’ve lived in the empire of the zoo/ before.”

I highly recommend this beautiful and eloquent collection to anyone interested in 1) decent poetry and/or 2) Africa and/or narratives by black Americans.

The African poet offers us a glimpse of what life was like for him growing up in Zimbabwe. We see religious themes, coming of age, and even social struggles. I was not aware of this poet before reading this book, but I will use some of his work in my world literature class.

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.”

A prize-winning debut poetry collection, Stray will not disappoint. Also includes an informative foreward which provides meaningful context for the readers.

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.

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.