The "Remembering Marechera" Anthology, a Call for Submission

Ivor Hartmann, writer, editor, visual artist and publisher, is calling for submission for the "Remembering Marechera" Anthology. The full call is below:

To celebrate Dambudzo Marechera’s posthumous 59th birthday this year I will be compiling an anthology entitled “Remembering Marechera”, consisting of essays, reviews, short stories, poems, etc. that follow this title/theme, to be published by StoryTime Publishing. To this end I invite your submissions until the 6th of April 2011.

• Theme: “Remembering Marechera”
• Word count: 1000-5000 words (less for poetry if needs be)
• Format: An attached Word doc/docx, times new roman, 12 point, single spaced.
• Submissions: By email only to: dambudzo.marechera@gmail.com
• Deadline: 6th of April 2011

The project will depend on the quantity and quality of submissions I receive, and if all goes well it will be distributed through Amazon’s Kindle platform in a variety of formats (and possibly print too depending). I look forward to reading your submissions. If you have any queries please email me at the submissions email.

You could also click here for more information.

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Dambudzo Marechera

Brief Bio: Dambudzo Marechera (1952 - 1987) has been described as an eccentric writer who was loved and hated with equal measure. He blazed the Zimbabwean literary scene in the late 70s and 80s. While he suffered under the minority White rule in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), he was not fooled by the paradise promised by nationalist fighters. Dismissed by two universities in succession, the University of Rhodesia and Oxford University, he went on to win the Guardian First Book Award with The House of Hunger in 1979. Living as a tramp-writer in London's squats he went on to write Black Sunlight (1980) and Black Insider (1990, posthumous release). His recognition soared after his first publication but as unconventional as he was he resisted any attempt at being absorbed into the London's Literary Society. His revolutionary writing style puts him in the mould of Joyce, Beckett and Soyinka. The House of Hunger was said to set a new path in African writing.

Back home in Zimbabwe, the author continued to criticize the new government of the day, often satirising it in plays and short stories that was said to have a Kafkaesque feel. Such works included Mindblast (1984) and Scrapiron Blues (1994, posthumous release). These criticisms led to the banning of Black Insider. His poetry collection Cemetery of Mind (1992) is said to pay respect to such greats as T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes and Sylvia Plath, among others.

Since his death, Marechera's work has been analyzed in the contexts of (post)modernism, postcolonialism, Bakhtin's carnivalesque, universal humanism, resistance literature, post- and anti-nationalism, queer theory, masculinity theories, feminism, and exilic consciousness, among others. At the same time, Marechera continues to be criticized for his nihilism, his failure to offer opportunities for transcendence while destroying all markers of stable identity, and for his supposed misogyny. (Source)

A black man who has suffered all the stupid brutalities of the white oppression in Rhodesia, his rage explodes, not in political rhetoric, but in a fusion of lyricism, wit, obscenity. Incredible that such a powerful indictment should also be so funny. Doris Lessing (in praise of The House of Hunger)