Massachusetts Statewide Poetry Calendar

A Window on the World through the Eyes of the Zimbabwean Poet Togara Muzanenhamo


Togara Muzanenhamo reads from his three collections of poetry. Muzanenhamo was born in Lusaka, Zambia and raised on a farm in Zimbabwe. He has studied in the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom. His poems have been widely published in numerous international journals and broadcast on radio and television. His first collection, Spirit Brides (2006), was shortlisted for the Jerwood Alderburg First Collection Prize, his second collection, Gumiguru (2014), was shortlisted for the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry and his third book, Textures ( 2014 -in collaboration with John Eppel) won the National Arts and Merit Awards for Literature. Muzanenhamo lives with his partner and children in Zimbabwe.
This event is co-sponsored by the New England Poetry Club.

Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent out prior to the event.

Danez Smith (they/them) is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness. Danez’s third collection, Homie, was published by Graywolf in January 2020.

Homie is Danez Smith’s magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith’s close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family—blood and chosen—arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is the exuberant new book written for Danez and for Danez’s friends and for you and for yours.