By Tendai Chisiri
50-year-old humanitarian, entereprenuer and journalist-public relations and communications person by training is extremely happy to be nominated for the Literary Awards in the Outstanding Poetry Book for her poetry book, “I Know Why the Heart Sings”.
Patience Chiyangwa who started to have her poems published at the age of sixteen is happy to be nominated for this year’s edition slated for 25 February at Harare International Conference Centre.
“For me it was a wonderful surprise . I was never looking at any literary entry for anything. And it is such great that it is my first anthology on my own. It is so special because it is in memory of my family”, she said in an interview.
She started writing poems at the age of sixteen after motivation form her late father who was a teacher at that time. “I used to talk a lot and my father Lucas Elton Chiyangwa suggested that I try writing”, she said.
At the age of sixteen, she published her poetry in an anthology titled “Bury the humble”, edited by Rosemary Smith Kebe in 1992.
She also did “Diary of Patience”, which is about herself and is on the Amazon and a bilingual publication published in Romania titled Kirin or Unicorn. The book is a joint publication with Romanian poet Carmen Voinescu.
Chiyangwa also published in “Anthology for Zimbabwe Women Writers in 1994 . In the year 2014,she was published on many websites across the world in India and Australia and many online platforms.
She says she is getting better with age like wine. ” I am getting more sensible, more aggressive because as an ageing person, I wasn’t that. I was expressing issues more lightly but now am a children’s rights activist and women’s right activist. I have inclination in all my work and it has that humanitarian component”, she said.
Patience Chiyangwa is not new to awards having won a journalist award as a freelance . She won the Ulrich Wickert International Journalist Children’s Rights Award, 2022 in Berlin , Germany.
Moreover, she won the EatOutMovement Forces4Good Award working with homeless women and girls category.
“I was also awarded a Doctor of Humanities (Honoris Causa) in recognition of my humanitarian work”, Dr Chiyangwa said.
She has about ninety poems in the poetry book “I know Why the Heart Sings”. The book is her favourite because it is in the memory of her brother Lesley Chiyangwa who died around the age of 30. It is also dedicated to her late father.
“Now I know why the Heart Sings was a finalist in the 2022 Eyelands Book Awards, Greece”, said ecstatic Dr Patience Chiyangwa.
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