Experience is, undoubtedly, the active agent in the poetry; the secret producer of all the emotions bundled up in Yankho Seunda’s thick voice.
When he begun wallowing in poetry, he did not know what he was getting into. In fact, he could sit alone with his laptop, packaging what he felt were random thoughts into lines and stanzas— but he could, really, not attach a name, let alone poetry, to whatever he was doing. Poetry was not even at the back of his mind because it did not exist in his vocabulary-of-life.
“I liked to write my thoughts down, to the extent that I had loads of these thoughts written down in my laptop. These were my inner experiences shared with myself [because the laptop, being mine, merely served as an extension of myself],” Seunda recollects.
But this routine of him writing his thoughts down and sharing them with the extension of his self, namely, the laptop, had to come to an end. Why not extend himself to fellow human beings?
Explains Seunda: “One day, Tawonga Nkhonjera of Dikamawoko Arts came across my laptop and discovered the written notes of my wandering thoughts. He told me it was poetry. That is in 2014. Yes, 2014. I have not been a spoken-word poet for a long time.
“Nkhonjera ’discovered’ my poetry when Blantyre City used to have Mibawa Café Open Sessions and Nkhonjera did not waste time but registered my name with the organisers and I found myself performing there. The first poem I performed before a live audience is titled ‘Sigh’. A month later, I was invited to the same venue as guest artist.”
Seunda’s performance that Wednesday night at Mibawa was so high-spirited that it left the audience unsuspecting that he is a product of the 1990s, born on November 25 1990.
It is, maybe, because Seunda delved straight into serious issues.
Imagine a poet starting his public-performance journey with the serious issue of a love relationship gone wrong! This is what the man with a small frame laden with heavy voice did that night because ‘Sigh’ addresses the issue of a persona who, high on the wings of illusion, hopes that the affair he or she is in is meant to outlive time itself.
But, the way things happen sometimes, love’s blossoming flowers wither and the persona is left facing the cold reality that, like flowers, the warm hand of love can hold back. Well, the persona might have lost a new-found love but Seunda, the poet, found his spot in the literary world and wonders why he did not realise what he really was long ago.
Before poetry
Seunda had been so many things before Nkhonjera ‘discovered’ the poet’s other self in 2014.
Of course, he had no idea about what he would become when he did his primary school at St Pious, Mbayani and Zingwangwa in Blantyre City, but that changed when he reached the door of secondary school. That is when he became so many things to different people.
For example, former schoolmates such as Anne Luhanga, Taufiq Jangiya and Aram Nyondo know him as an actor— award-winning actor for that matter. He started acting while in Form 3 at Blantyre Secondary School and was no stranger to ATEM drama festivals. It did not come as a surprise, therefore, that Seunda featured in a Blantyre Secondary School play directed by Shlupego Chisiza. The play won the ATEM trophy that year, and the moment remains as vivid as a toothless child’s smile.
To others, images of Seunda remain perched in their minds as a basketball player jumping up and down, and all over, the court. He used to feature for the Blantyre Secondary School team as a point guard. A point guard is an interesting, and key, character in basketball because it is him who moves with the ball; passing it. He keeps things in motion.
It could be said, in a way, that it was basketball that drove him into acting.
“I remember that I joined the field of acting when we were off-season in basketball. I wanted something to relate to and, so, I made the foray into drama. And drama has become the other part of me because, as I speak, I am the producer and playwright of pamphambano, a 30-minute chichewa play broadcast on Ufulu FM every Thursday. I have written over 50 episodes so far,” he says.
But, maybe, his family members influenced him greatly, too.
His father, the late Moses, was a teacher by profession, which partly sheds light on why Yankho liked to participate in extra-curricular activities. Later, his father got engrossed in sports and rose to the position of Regional Sports Manager for the Southern Region.
And, then, his mother was another silent influencer.
“She was into the arts, but not necessarily as an active player. She used to watch artistic performances and that had, in its own way, an influence on how I viewed art,” he says.
His sister, Yamikani, had a foray into acting while at Blantyre Secondary School, too— although she did not take it so seriously that she could turn it into a career.
Seunda feels that, in the years he has been here, life has given him a chance to experience both extremes: the bad; the good.
“I was born in Blantyre City, at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, and grew up in the city. I led a comfortable life because my father provided everything— be it good food, fancy toys— I wanted. I had a claim on life because I could watch something on the television and demand it. I always got what I wanted.
“When my father passed on while I was in Standard 6, I experienced what I would call ghetto life because I moved to Thunga in Thyolo. Not that life was cruel or what. No. Just that such an experience helped me experience the other side of life, and I learned to accept and respect others. Life is not always about gold and precious diamonds. These two environments have shaped me and, I think, my world. I can express myself better when talking about both worlds,” Seunda reflects.
Poetic reflections
Powered by experiences from both worlds, the extremely good and the extremely bad, Seunda has, since 2014, been ready to conquer the world piece by piece, starting with the piece of land called Malawi.
He did so when he unleashed the poetry album ‘Draining sensations’ on Malawi in 2014.
And there is something about ‘Draining sensations’ that is so familiar to poetry lovers that it is easy to identify it with Nobel Prize-winning Mexican poet, Octavio Paz. Paz is famous for his insightful words: “Poetic activity is revolutionary by nature; a means of interior liberation”.
So, employing poetry as an interior liberation tool, Seunda let his inner-self out through ‘Draining sensations’. In what sense?
“I used ‘Draining sensations’ to empty my emotions. I am an emotional person, by the way. I write and speak from the heart. So, I realised that before I could embark on commercial poetry, I needed to talk about myself, my experiences, my life,” he says.
This brings us to the age-old debate of whether it is possible to separate the author from the persona in a work of art. In some cases, the author and persona are different; in other cases, like when Seunda writes and speaks from the heart, it is difficult to separate the author from persona.
Seunda explains: “Well, sometimes, the persona in my work of poetry is me. This is particularly true in ‘Draining sensations’. Otherwise, I talk about issues that do not relate to the author. So, it varies,” he says.
Maybe it varies with the thickness or thinness of emotions deposited in a piece of artistic work.
What is clear, though, is that ‘Draining sensations’ turned Seunda into a national figure. It is like all the work he put into writing his thoughts in his lonely places was a build-up to his present visibility. Take, for instance, what happened after he recited the poem at Mibawa Café Open Session in 2014. A month later, he was invited to the same venue as a guest artist.
It must be said that Seunda came onto the scene when other spoken-word poets, Q. Malewezi in particular, had turned spoken-word poetry into a national endeavour.
Still, Seunda found a gap and filled it. That is, after observing that the market was facing its own version of English poetry drought, he produced an English poetry album – ‘Draining sensations’ itself— and the pioneers – Q. Malewezi in particular— had to follow suit.
So, in a way, Seunda has opened the path to English poetry albums, though he has only produced a single album, two English singles, and this week Monday, a Chichewa single titled Mwabwerako.
Mwabwerako is a social critique in the sense that the persona is addressing the issue of people who leave their families behind and go to countries unknown in search for greener pastures. The persona argues that the more a path remains unused [because the human being who was using it went away; perhaps to the point of no-return], the more it [the path] gets narrower.
“In other words, people one leaves behind do not want to be looked at from the front,” Seunda explains.
The figurative use of the word ‘path’ in Mwabwerako is more philosophical than proverbial, but Seunda admits being a stranger to philosophy.
“I would say I do not regard myself as a philosopher because I never went to school to study philosophy, but I have my own way of tackling issues philosophically,” he says.
His philosophies come out clearly in poems such as ‘Cursed endeavours’, ‘Growing wings’, ‘Untitled’ [popularly known as ‘Kachikondi’], ‘Words I should have told you’, ‘Sigh’, ‘Mwezi Uwale’ [do not be misled by the title; this is an English poem], ‘Marriage’, ‘Expectations’ and ‘Yesterday’.
English savvy, Chichewa shy?
An outstanding feature about Seunda’s poetry is that it is foreign, in terms of language, but local in terms of experiences. Why the discrepancy?
“It is not like there is a discrepancy. I just happen to express myself better in English than Chichewa. That said, I can safely tell you that I am fluent in Chichewa, as evidenced by my Chichewa play on Ufulu FM; just that, when it comes to poetry, I have not ‘gathered’ the necessary Chichewa poetry vocabulary. Being fluent in Chichewa and having a rich Chichewa vocabulary are two different things. Until that I develop the vocabulary, I shall continue expressing myself in English,” he says.
But, then, Mabwerako represents a shift in focus, although it [the poem] can be said to be a product of a ‘literary’ accident.
Seunda sheds light on the literary accident. “It so happened that I had written down a number of English poems because I was preparing for the release of my next poetry album. But, then, my little brother accidentally deleted the poems in my laptop. That meant I had to start all over again – which I have done— and, to fill the gap, I decided to release Mwabwerako this week.”
But that is not the only reason Mwabwerako had to be a gap-filler, though.
“Again, my next poetry album was designed to be an expensive project because of what I want to do in the album. So, I just decided to release ‘Mwabwerako’ as I work on the modalities. I mean, as I work on aspects such as financial mobilisation,” Seunda adds.
Growing wings
His physical stature remains a small frame. His voice remains an over-pouring of deepness [bass], his smile has not disappeared, but his reputation in society has ‘grown wings’.
This means a horde of organisers keep knocking on his door.
So far, he has performed at the Lake of Stars Festival, Sand Music Festival, Blantyre Arts Festival, Tumaini Festival, Mwezi Wawala Festival, Land of Poets Festival, April Festival, as well as during the late Everton Chimombo Memorial Show held at Chancellor College in Zomba.
Nevertheless, he is yet to perform at an international festival. When such a chance presented itself, he could not manage to mobilise sufficient funds to take him to the venue, Uganda. And, so, the dream remains unrealised.
But this has not stopped him from eyeing a performance in the United States of America. Particularly, Def Jam poetry tickles his fancy. Def Jam is, in a way, like the defunct Mibawa Sessions in the sense that these are open microphone sessions.
Poets such as Mutabaruka are frequent ‘suspects’ at Def Jam Poetry sessions.
Seunda has grounds for his hopes that this dream, too, will come true.
“I am not called Yankho [answer] for nothing. My parents called me Yankho because they had been praying for a baby-boy and my birth was the answer to that prayer because I found three sisters in the family. Then, another boy was born after me. So, I know that prayers are meant to be answered,” Seunda says.
As he waits for that window of opportunity, he continues wandering into the forest of his own experiences. Sometimes, his wanderings take him to imaginary worlds. And the forests and the imaginary worlds are his poetry pieces.
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