My library button
  • Book cover of The Trick is to Keep Breathing
    Rinos Mwanaka

     · 2022

    THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING: Covid 19 Stories From African and North American Writers, Vol 3, features 2 essays, 5 stories and 64 poems from 32 poets, writers and academicians from North America and Africa, writers residing in these among other countries; The USA, Canada, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, The Gambia, Ghana, Malawi.., surrounding the grate, telling stories of resilience and triumph as they dealt with Covid 19 and its several mutations over the past 3 years. Humans are connection beings and one of the most fulfilling ways they do so is through sharing stories. It's time we surround the fire, warming ourselves as we tell the stories of our humanness and resilience, stories of triumph, stories to release unrequited pain, anger and grief, stories of loss, stories that will act as continuing breath....

  • Book cover of Mwanaka: Best New African Poets Anthology 2020

    Best New African Poets 2020 Anthology, which can be in part titled the Covid Diaries is the 6th volume of the yearly anthology of contemporary African poets, Best New African Poets (BNAP). In this anthology the poets tackle the covid pandemic, some with fear, some with pain, some with anger, some with forebodings of danger; you sense the feeling of insecurity in all of the entries around this issue. This is understandable. As a humanity we have had to go, and we are still going, through one of the most terrible times in our existence, as millions get swept away in this tidal danger. But we will vanquish this monster, we will come out stronger, in the meanwhile as we fight this monster we continue celebrating our humanity in love poems, in spiritual poetry, in politics and governance, in developmental agendas, in foods, in day to day connections, which will outstay this menace. Best New African Poets 2020 Anthology has over 352 pieces from 140 African poets from among other African countries: Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Egypt, Tunisia, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, Comoros, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cameroun, Namibia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana etc, and those of African Diasporas in Portugal, Brazil, the UK, USA, China, etc

  • Book cover of Shaping Up: Art drawings, Essays, Poetry and Interpretations
    Rinos Mwanaka

     · 2021

    Shaping Up is more personal and intimate than the author's previous works. The poems and images reflect a period while he was living outside of Zimbabwe, in South Africa. The immigrant experience gives the work a more personal, closed, abstracted feel driven by loneliness of the exilitic condition. Living in the element, uninhibited and careless can help deal with confounding, controversial issues more easily, this theme can be dissected from the drawings to do with sex, sexuality and gender issues. The line breaks, whirls, thins out, sometimes is bold, sometimes is barely there, thus the drawings straddle the tenuousness of time and life.

  • Book cover of Registers of Loss
    Rinos Mwanaka

     · 2022

    My work takes the nature of interactive, collaborative and multidisciplinary. I work across several art fields, including among others literary (fictions, novels, essays poetry, play, short stories, songs...), musical (composition, singing, reciting, mbira, marimba, keyboards, a little guitar...), and visual (drawings, paintings, photography, collages, mixed media, installation etc...) I am interested in connection, convergence, community and cooperation, following disparate sometimes disfigured experiences, seeing how they can come together or shy away from each other to create new wholes. The baobab trees are ancient trees, some might be thousands years old, imagine the people who have stayed in these dwellings, who have ate the fruits of these trees, who have used its leaves as relish(we create mashed okra relish with baobab leaves), the ailments treated by its buck....every part of this succulent tree is useful. In this photo journey I learned a lot more about these beautiful souls: they have a tendency to create musical lines, mostly linear, it's like one tone starting it, fading and letting the next tone to take over and this will fade and let another tone to take over, such that you can see the lines, how they conjoin to create music beyond human understanding. And most of the Baobabs, I realized, inhabit the same place in numbers, and usually they are on high grounds, like Gods who love elevated dwellings, and they look down upon other small humans (small trees, humans etc...), but there are also some singular baobabs that inhabit lower grounds and most of these are solitary and from my memory growing up here, these don't bear fruits. And whilst I was photographing the Baobabs several story strands in my head converged around one far much more important issue, the issue of Climate Change and Global Warming. In Registers of Loss I encourage working together as human beings to arrest Global warming and climate change the way the baobabs work together to communicate in linear notes, or in community thoughts.

  • Book cover of Keys in the River
    Rinos Mwanaka

     · 2018

    Keys in the River: New and Collected Stories, is a cycle of stories about life, love and spirituality, told as if the reader were sitting and listening to neighbors and friends talking about life. Some stories are tender, even comic; in others, tragedy and outrage lurk. The stories share a common thread, a noble stance in the struggle to find love, freedom, completeness, humanness and satisfaction.

  • Book cover of A Conversation
    Rinos Mwanaka

     · 2018

    A Conversation, A Contact has 22 fiction pieces around themes to do with political struggle, love relationships, heartbreaks and the resulting breakdowns, dreams, folklores, life, spirituality, anger, hate, grief, and all sorts of other human breaths.

  • Book cover of Logbook written by a drifter
    Rinos Mwanaka

     · 2018

    Logbook written by a drifter, is a cycle of interlinked poems that deal with life, spirituality, language, philosophy, love and relationships. A main theme are relationships which have changed the character. Those which the character doesnt know how to deal with; which have make the character into a wreck, emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually: he is in a small space. This collection encourages us to keep those spaces, spaces of the drift, until we have faced our challenges, afterall sometimes drifting is all we can do!

  • Book cover of Drawing Without Licence
  • Book cover of How the Twins Grew Up

    This English/Shona edtion of How the Twins Grew Up brings authentic biographical stories of two twin brothers. The stories take place in their family circle, at school, at home or in the backyard. It is written as a realistic prose narrative with a humorous intonation, unexpected dramatic twists and interesting punch lines. The stories are short and concise, with effective endings and situations, full of laughter, caricature and absurdity. The book has been translated into 20 languages and has received several awards. For those who love humour and want to return to their childhood, these stories will come as a real refreshment and a unique artistic experience.

  • Book cover of Gathering Evidence

    Gathering Evidence (The Evidence of Things Not Said) is a collection of two diary cycles and two essays. The diaries are from the period, 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. The diaries gives an insight into life in Zimbabwe during these periods, 10 years ago. You find the political situation laid bare, the religious fanaticism, social constructions, the dream state, love life of the character, the weather, anything that the character thought to shone light on, and it especially gives an insight into what the writer is writing other than the diaries, whereby his writerly life and processes are tackled. One of the essays tackles issues to do with ownership and the other essay tackles that fractious opposition political landscape in Zimbabwe especially the enigma that Nelson Chamisa has become to the Zimbabweans.