Poet Biography

Ignatius Mabasa

IGNATIUS MABASA is known as being a “top new voice” of the people of Zimbabwe. He is a performing poet, novelist and storyteller. He has published two collections of poems in Shona, Tipeiwo Dariro and Muchinokoro Kunaka, as well as a satirical novel, Mapenzi. He works as a deputy director for the British Council in Zimbabwe. “The result,” he says, of the promotion of English in Zimbabwean schools, “is a sad one where we deny ourselves and end up talking to our children in a foreign language in our very own homes.”