Overview

Brick by brick, Tanatsei Gambura dismantles walls of silence to show us the story behind the story: in a township room in 80s Harare, a straße in Bonn, an otherplace locked into grandmothers' hips. Here we find lost brothers, predatory officers, the smiles of women on Fair & Lovely tubes, the concomitance of personal and national cataclysms. We confront our collusion in collective forgetfulness, and the painful but necessary process of rememory. Assured and inventive, Gambura reminds us that words are tools for worldbuilding, engineering language with startling grace. In my language, the dead are welcomed into the home. But the word for home is also the word for sing, so maybe invited into a song.

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9781913268169

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'Here is a poet of interiors who takes us inside to explore forms of vulnerability with tenderness and care.' Tinashe Mushakavanhu 'The title invokes an inheritance of erasure: what it means to live in a postcolony is to search for things you don't know or to reach for what must be remembered. In memorialising what she has forgotten, in archiving the flitting/fleeting, Tana makes permanent what might otherwise be transient. There are histories in her sentences.' Mona Hakimi 'A calling to a homeland, a calling to the oppressor and a calling to the oppressed. Things I Have Forgotten Before is a powerful journey which explores racism, colourism and the multitude of ways neo-colonialism has shaken the roots of the Zimbabwean people.' Courtney Stoddart 'Gambura's stellar debut is a negotiation of silence and speech in the face of trauma - a trauma that is at once personal and national, individual and collective, impersonal and familial.' Tariro Ndoro 'A searing and tender debut which demands our ears. These poems navigate place, memory and geography with ease, craft and beauty.' Warda Yassin 'Bold in her work, Gambura confronts subjects that have been clouded by fear, be it in the personal, social or political arena.' Tsitsi Chirikure 'This work is a force to be reckoned with.' Pages Matam

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