Muysaemura Zimunya (Muysaemura Bonas Zimunya) Biography

Zimbabwean poet, born in Mutare; he attended Goromonzi High School and the University of Rhodesia, from which he was expelled, and was subsequently subjected to detention for his political activities. After completing undergraduate and postgraduate work at the University of Kent, he returned to Zimbabwe and began lecturing at the University of Zimbabwe in 1980. Widely regarded as pre-eminent among contemporary Zimbabwean poets, Zimunya's collections include Zimbabwe Ruins (1979), Thought Tracks (1982), Country Dawns and City Lights (1985), and Perfect Poise (1993). The celebratory rediscovery of Zimbabwe's indigenous cultural resources in his early work is linked to the hostility to urban modernity which pervades much of his writing. Personal and communal identity are imaginatively fused with the power of landscape and nature in his best work, producing poetry of great lyrical and elegiac strength. Zimunya's other works include Those Years of Drought and Hunger (1982), a study of modern Zimbabwean function, and the short stories of Nightshift (1993). Birthright: a Selection of Poems from Southern Africa (1989) is among the numerous anthologies he has edited.