Zimbabwean writer Rutendo Chichaya has released her debut poetry anthology, titled ‘Anchored Stitches.’ A collection of poems that gathers the textures of Zimbabwean life – its endurance, grief and quiet triumphs – into a lyrical tapestry of voices that confront loss, labour and longing.
Published by Carnelian Heart Publishing, the anthology traverses from the quiet corridors of unemployment and injustice to the delicate patterns of womanhood, motherhood and mourning. It received high praise from renowned book reviewer Jacqueline Nyathi, describing it as a work that invites shared vulnerability in its writing.
“In these poems, Rutendo Chichaya cuts her own heart open and lays it before the reader—and in so doing, offers an invitation to the reader to be sliced open, too. This is the confident voice of an eloquent Zimbabwean, one who speaks with an ‘inferno in her mouth’ of grief, despair, and rage against evil state structures and the patriarchy…” said Jacqueline Nyathi, from Harare Review of Books
“But who also wields language to remind us of the rhythms of the natural world, of tradition, of love and passion, of ‘reclamation, redemption and recovery’ — the things that hold our souls together. This beautiful collection is to be read, treasured, quoted from, and read again.”
Previously published in the short story collections ‘The African Feminist Anthology: Women’s Tales,’ ‘Intwasa Short Stories: Volume 1’ and the poetry anthology ‘Tesserae: A mosaic of poems by Zimbabwean women,’ Rutendo Chichaya’s debut has been a long time coming.
The writer has long dabbled in the literary world as a writer, poet, book reviewer and podcast host. In 2023 she won the ShonaReads Zimbabwe Speculative Fiction Competition and she has been nominated for the Intwasa Short Story Prize (2020), the Hamwe Short Story Contest (2021), and her blog for the AfroBloggers Award (2021).
‘Anchored Stitches’ is now on sale across all major book selling platforms, and in Zimbabwe from Book Fantastics.
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