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SKIPPING WITHOUT ROPES
by Jack Mapanje
Bloodaxe, 80 pp., £6.95
That a distinguished North of England publishing house has brought out Jack Mapanje's latest collection of verse is both a sign of the times and an indication of the position in which the Malawian poet now finds himself. York has been the base for Mapanje and his family since the poet was released from prison by then-president of Malawi, Hastings Banda. The book's publication by Bloodaxe is appropriate because Mapanje's reputation is no longer that of, simply, a Malawian poet, nor is his work restricted to an "African Writers Series."
The reasons why the Malawian poet and university lecturer Jack Mapanje was detained are not entirely clear. For the present, suffice it to say that he was a leading member of a tiny literary community at odds with a tyrannical government machine manned by officials who feared for their skins. Just why Hastings Banda was so determined that Mapanje should "Rot, rot, rot," is also unclear, as is the precise nature of the combination of influences-it certainly included governments and international organizations-that eventually exerted sufficient pressure to ensure the writer's release. Mapanje is currently working on a book about his imprisonment in which these issues will be discussed at greater length and with more authority than is possible here.
Skipping without Ropes derives its title from one of the few forms of exercise that could be taken in Mikuyu Prison and is divided into three parts. The first is titled "From Mikuyu Prison to Exile," the second, "Impressions of Exile," and the third, "The Return of the Rhinoceros." In the 39 poems brought between these covers, the allusive, conversational, conspiratorial poet who found a voice in two earlier collections, Of Chameleons and Gods and The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison, is often recognisable. But there are some new strains. For example, the sequence of three poems, beginning, "On His Life Excellency's House Arrest," all conclude with lines from Malawian funeral songs. The poet abandoned early versification in African languages partly because a manuscript was lost. He has done research on oral traditions that has taken linguistic and stylistic steps toward home. However, just where "home" is for the writer born to Yao and Nyanja parents in Kadango village, and who now lives in New Earswick, is not entirely clear.
There is also a new element in the last poem in the collection, "When the Watery Monsters Argued," which concludes with an oath from a "him" who can be linked, via the Milimbo Lagoon, with the poet. The final stanza, a summative statement addressed to fellow Malawians at a time of transition, reads:
Brethren, golden glories are
hard to police,
But do not ask us to forget
the past, and how
Could poetry forget its past;
empower others
To forget your past-my
struggle continues!
Close reading of this and other poems throws up characteristic Mapanje-esque allusions to events and individuals. On occasion, explanations are found in the four pages of notes at the back of the volume, but these are not comprehensive. Tantalizing rather than comprehensive, they are part of the struggle to keep amnesia at bay. Thus the reference to "Mbulaje-Jwine [who] traversed // The globe for years" is an obvious enough allusion to the late Life President of Malawi, whose reaping of academic honors on both sides of the Atlantic formed an important part of the official biography. However, Mapanje also refers to "the village hoping [the traveller] would / Purge his veiled childhood transgression," and this leads into very different biographical territory. Clarification is provided by the informed or rumour-nourished poet by the reference to "the accidental murder of the female // Cousin who'd eaten the delectable / rabbit's foot he'd brought from his triumphal hunt… ." The Life Presidential narrative that emerges when the questions prompted by this reference are pursued was long suppressed-and for obvious reasons. The determined, successful student was an approved image; the haunted cousin-killer was not.
Other poems, including the one that begins "The hyenas are playing political prisoners…," also provoke enquiries. It seems that under the new dispensation erstwhile academic colleagues (whom the poet later interrogates with "Why did you merely watch, stroking your dry // Chin or twisting your goatee…?") have taken to regretting that they had not been "imprisoned by the monster." No individual chin strokers or goatee twisters are identified, but analyses of the period are creeping along the shelves, and subsequent writing on Banda's Dark Days in Malawi may reveal all.
Mapanje is a family man and his poem, "Just Another Jehovah's Witness" links up with his earlier studies of relatives who were involved with a branch of Christianity that regularly turned contact with the Malawi Congress Party into confrontation. In this instance, the poem is addressed to a recently departed "brother," perhaps more precisely a brother-in-law, and includes the revelation that Mapanje's father, a mchona or migrant worker, is "buried under the tractors of apartheid Braamfontein /…remarried / with lots of children stalking Soweto's liberated streets… ."
The poet's position at the time of publication was also that of a migrant worker: Living in York, and holding, as a biographical note indicates, short-term fellowships here and writer's residencies there. Quite unlike his father, he has taken his wife and children into exile with him. Together they have been making a home under British skies, and, in the substantial central section of this collection, "Impressions of Exile," we are able to share some of his and his family's experiences.
There have been several studies of the impact of the migrant labor system on Malawian village communities. There have not been any on the impact of such migrations on Malawian poets and their families. Mapanje's collection leads us into this territory and, appropriately, out again. In the final section, from which I have already quoted, he moves on once more to examine his reactions on return visits to Malawi.
The return of the articulate African intellectual and activist from exile to a (one hopes) changing homeland is a theme that is likely to preoccupy poets and writers. They can be expected to explore the significance of the external exile-the second sentence-that followed their persecution, and to make their hesitant comments on transitional states. Mapanje tellingly concludes, as already indicated, with an image of Africa bleeding, because she has forgotten her past, and with a statement of his commitment to continuing "my struggle." Unlike an earlier generation of writers, the past Mapanje refers to includes the recent past, the experience of independence and of black tyranny. His present struggle is with a new breed of demons, or in his terms, with another generation of hammerheads and whiskered malefactors. His writing inevitably prompts the question: "How much has changed in Malawi?"
James Gibbs, who has taught in Malawi, currently teaches at the University of the West of England.
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