VOICES
The Urban Ancient
poet…..
He is young, and very talented.
He delivers the day to day issues
that affect each and every one of
us, in one way or the other,
utilising thought provoking
statements in urban lingo and
with witty humour. He made his
HIFA poetic debut this year, and
was the slam master at the 2013
Shoko festival poetry slam, and
has been a frequent feature both
on radio and television. We are
rest assured that he is one of the
new breed of poets, who are
going to change the view of
poetry and perhaps
commercialise it. He is the
Urban-ancient poet, he is
Madzitatiguru.
GM.: Madzitatiguru, what an
interesting name. Who is
Madzitatiguru?
MTG: Madzitatiguru is more or
less like a selection of certain
characteristics that come from a
boy or a man, I don’t know what
you call him, and 23 year old called
Tendekai Tati. In other words,
Madzitatiguru is a character; a
character that I created, but then I,
myself go by the name Tendekai
Tati, that’s who I am at home, and
that’s who I am with people
who know me on a personal basis
that I ‘m Tendekai. But when I’m
on stage, when I’m writing, that’s
when I become Madzitatiguru. And
Madzitatiguru is this mixture of
ancient art or artist, I don’t know
what to call it, but it’s a culture,
just like poetry has been there since
the days of old like the poetry for
mitupo (totems), “Maita Soko, maita
Gudo vanotibira chibage mumunda…”,
something like that into the
modern sphere. Madzitatiguru is
this person who tries to bring that
ancient culture into the modern
sphere or tries to bring relevance
into the things that happen today
using ancient methods. So that’s
why Madzitatiguru would be
called the
Urban Ancient poet because he
brings the ancient culture into
the modern atmosphere.
GM.: Why did you choose
poetry? When did you start
with poetry?
MTG: I started in 1995 when I
was 5 years old. I didn’t actually
choose poetry then, it was a
matter of a teacher picking me
out in nursery school of a poem
that they wrote. But I kept on
remembering when I went to
school that I did a poem called
“Education”, I don’t remember
the words exactly, but I
remember the title of the poem,
I remember myself reciting it.
So I always knew
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