Why We Are Economic Dwarfs

By Ndaba Sibanda

corruption bleeds our budgets,
a cancer that makes us midgets

Commentary on the poem
by Simbarashe Nyatsanza

I love the experimentation with form expressed here. I've always battled myself with the question of what constitutes a poem and what it is meant to convey. In high-school, I learnt about sonnets, elegies, haikus etc, all kinds of expression that is ultimately rendered poetic. But the question remained; that is it about form, or length, or intent, or meaning?

It's liberating to experience poetic situations where poets simply immortalize their thoughts and that in itself becomes poetry, and poetic expression. It's a furtherance of form, in my view, a breaking down of established barriers and a declaration of new forms of thinking and then being as well.
Akin to what Marechera perhaps might have meant when he spoke of language and how it is like water, and how one can ultimately, besides reshaping, become one with it.
So, it's quite great and exciting to see these forms coming up and being confidently expressed. Because this is how forms of expression, thoughts and literal revelations evolve. We need more of this.

Commentary on the poem
by Qinisela Possent Ndlovu

Wow, I love the terrifying horror and shock that poets use in naming their world! It is just out of this world, pure, divine art.
I never thought corruption would be equalled to dwarfs and midgets. These are small, human beings with small body frames and limbs; products of man with an anatomy that's corrupt.
How we are conceived, maybe, is morally repugnant in fornication, adultery and rape and maybe the children are born with malignant conditions or with disease like a tainted ' corrupt economy', all a result of being abused and misused by man.
I love the grotesque use of language in this short but effective poem, and it shows with words we can create multiple meanings.