Interview by Renee Cronley
Jennifer Mariani’s debut poetry chapbook, All Forgotten Now (Off Topic Publishing, 2022), is an exploration of grief after leaving Zimbabwe at the age of seventeen to pursue a career in ballet in England and later Canada. These poignant poems guide the reader through her reflections of the privilege of growing up white in post independent Zimbabwe, and feeling like an outsider in her new homes.
Renee Cronley: The first poem in All Forgotten Now is “They Call Me Africa.” In what way do you see this poem as an introduction to your chapbook?
Jennifer Mariani: It is one of the earliest poems by date in the chapbook, so it is a good marker for how I was feeling when I first came to Canada. Friends jokingly called me Africa as a nod to my home that I constantly spoke of and longed for. I first came to Canada because life in Zimbabwe was fraught politically and economically in the early 2000s. It was very unstable, and there didn’t seem to be a lot of options for making a long-term career as a ballet dancer or teacher when daily life was so unpredictable. My early days in Canada reminded me that I yearned for my home, even though it made little sense at the time to stay there. I was passionate about Zimbabwe; I would regale anyone who would listen with stories from my childhood in Africa and describe the scenery and all the ways life was so different there to the norms of life in Canada. The poem “Song of Home,” which appears near the end of the chapbook, was actually the earliest poem by date in the collection. I wrote that poem in the Harare International Airport on my way to Canada, and I believe it sums up the grief I felt better than any other poem in the collection.
RC: One of the striking aspects of this collection is that you juxtapose the privilege of growing up white in post independent Zimbabwe against poverty and racism. The poems “The Good Racist,” “Iniquities,” and “When We Were White” stood out to me. Could you comment on that aspect of your work?
JM: Addressing racism and privilege was a hallmark of my later poems about Zimbabwe. Initially, I wrote about the things I longed for: family, my lost love, the landscape, and even the simplicity of watching the sunset over Lake Kariba. After I had children and returned to my writing, I thought about how different their childhood was compared to mine. They were growing up in a peaceful country without the threat of civil war or economic decline or drought or rampant disease. And I remembered that my upbringing in Zimbabwe was not an average upbringing. Being white afforded a lot of privilege after the years of colonialism in Southern Africa. A conversation with a Black Zimbabwean friend, which really became the crux of the poem “Iniquities,” spurred many of these reflections. My friend summed it up by saying his Zimbabwe and my Zimbabwe were not the same; that prompted me to analyze my childhood memories against the backdrop of racism and privilege.
RC: The dominant theme in this collection is grief; it whispers between the words in your poems like you’re telling a secret. Could you speak to the paradox of knowing what could never be your home again will always be your home?
JM: This is the legacy of loss that so many Zimbabweans will tell you about. Many of us left the country to start new lives because of the devastating effects of the dictatorship of Mugabe and the bad governance of Zanu PF (his ruling party). There was civil unrest, as well as political and economic instability. I think it would have been easier to let go of a country that I had wanted to leave as opposed to one where I felt like I had to. My absence was always meant to be temporary. In my twenties, I tried very hard to make plans to move back to Zimbabwe, even as the situation there continued to deteriorate. Leaving Africa turned into a perpetual mourning for many reasons. Not only did I mourn the only culture and environment I had ever known while trying to adjust to new ones, but the realization that my temporary situation had become a permanent one was hard to accept, and I resisted that acceptance—prolonging the feeling of not belonging in Canada. I think if I had left Zimbabwe knowing that I would not be moving back, I would have said goodbye differently.
I acknowledge it is a privilege to live in Canada and raise my children here, and to have had a relatively easy go of making a new life as many people flee countries in much worse circumstances. The irony is that having lived in Canada for so long, assimilating slowly over two decades, I feel like I would have a hard time returning to Zimbabwe now. So I feel a dual sense of not fully belonging here, but knowing that I would struggle to belong back home after all this time. As the years go by, and I accept the circumstances of what happened in Zimbabwe as being outside my control, I have started to have a sense of belonging to both countries in completely different ways.
RC: The relationship between home and landscapes spills out between these pages. In my favourite poem, “Star and Song IV,” there is a shift in how you convey that sense of home. I want to give you the space to discuss what home means to you, its evolution, and how you represent it in your chapbook.
JM: “Star and Song IV” (from a collection of poems I wrote for my daughters) is the poem that seems to resonate most with Canadians based on the feedback from interviews and podcasts. I was in Canmore looking at the Rocky Mountains reflected in a frigid river in early spring, and the knowledge that my children would look at this landscape with the same love I have for the Zimbabwean landscape hit me. Although I am in awe of how beautiful the Rockies are, they do not elicit the same emotional response in me as they do my children. It was a profound moment to realize that they will tie this landscape to their childhood memories, and will have the same bond with Canada as I have with Zimbabwe. It shifted my perspective in that, although I don’t belong to this land, I belong to my children, who are at home here. It was the first time I felt connected to Canada in a way that I had not before.
RC: When you reflect on the emotional elements that came with developing this chapbook, what surprised you the most?
JM: I was surprised by how daunting it was to share vulnerable work. I wrote the poems without the intention of sharing them. It was nerve-wracking to put something so personal and intimate out there for the world to see..
In some ways, going back through the poems to ready them for publication and having my editor, Marion Lougheed, shape the arc of the chapbook, ultimately gave me the opportunity to process those emotions again from a distance. Even sharing grief is a mourning in itself; collecting all these poems was like collecting years of my life together into a small pile and saying, “This is all there is of me”—and feeling surprised at how little there is to show for a lifetime of loving Zimbabwe.
Jennifer Mariani was born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe. Her first collection of poems “All Forgotten Now”, a chapbook, was published by Off Topic Publishing. Her poetry has also been featured in Mosi oa Tunya Literary Review, Uproar (The Lawrence House Centre For The Arts), Off Topic Publishing, The League of Canadian Poets Poetry Pause and numerous other publications. She has been a guest judge for Off Topic Publishing’s monthly poetry contest. Jennifer writes about Africa; both the landscape and being white in post-independent Zimbabwe. She also writes about women’s issues including domestic violence, body image and eating disorders. Jennifer currently resides in Calgary, Alberta with her one partner, two daughters, three cats and numerous volumes of Pablo Neruda’s poetry. She teaches ballet and her favourite poems are written for her children.
Renee Cronley is a writer and nurse from Brandon, Manitoba. She studied Psychology and English at Brandon University, and Nursing at Assiniboine Community College. Her work has appeared in NewMyths.com, Love Letters to Poe, Dark Dispatch, Weird Little Worlds and several other anthologies and literary journals. She is currently working on a poetry chapbook about nurse burnout.