nowhere is a long way from here

And set AK fire to the shrieking winds This breatbreath of bronchial granite Revealed underneath the torn silken blouse Where landmines tore her moonraked promise Diseased craters the burst boils of a spent soul

taken from
There Is Nowhere To Go Mister
Dambudzo Marechera
Cemetery of Mind

A New Start

This blog needs to be more organised. I have cleaned up the muddy images I was posting before and so will be reposting the same paintings; this time, however, you'll probably be able to see more. Which is good with visual art, always a plus being able to see things....er

My mum very sweetly went online and ordered me two of the only available books of Marechera's for my birthday. So I will be incorporating his words into these entries as his writings were the genesis of the paintings. Also a Radiohead song - hence the name "BLackeyed Angel".

BLackeyed Angel is about blindness and sight, truth and the things i can't put into words but Dambudzo could. I understand the name was not used in this context within the Radiohead song, 'Pyramid Song' (off the album Amnesiac); yet I believe it is not altogether too far a stretch of the creative imagination as Radiohead's music has consistently delved into the arena of the theme of awareness.

The aim of this site is to bring to wider attention, the literary works of poet and writer, Dambudzo Marechera, many of which remained unpublished due to his strong political views, his need to be recognised as a writer and not a "post-colonial Zinbabwean writer", his failing health and his drinking problem. Not to mention his poverty and the lack of a non-government owned publishing house in Zimbabwe. And the rest of the world's disinterest in the country once Independence had been declared in 1980.

If you wish to know more about Radiohead go to: radiohead.com or greenplastic.com
If you wish to know more about my paintings, leave a comment and I'll reply.

Ciao
BEA


"My whole life has been an attempt to make myself the skeleton in my own cupboard"
Dambudzo Marechera, Harare 1986

Hey Kids

Check out my music page at MySpace.

http://myspace.com/blackeyedcatrin

I have the same jacket - almost

Okay folks, this is a portrait of the late Dambudzo Marechera, a fine poet and writer. Like most poets, he was unappreciated for most of his short life. He also drank a lot and was sent down from Oxford for refusing to admit that he was insane. He was hailed as the primary literary voice of Zimbabwe, but when he declined to be the government's propaganda puppy, found that he could not get his work published by the government controlled publishers.

Marechera believed that a writer must write in opposition to the government under which he writes. He once staged a one-man protest, marching through the streets of Harare holding a banner, with citizens staring at him from all sides and none daring to join him. Notable here is Marechera's insight into the newly independent Zimbabwe. Long before anyone dared to mention it, in the early 80's, Marechera was aware of, not to mention outspoken about the (at that stage) barely visible, totalitarianist leanings of Mugabe's Government.

Marechera died in 1987. His work is hard to come by these days. If you're reading this, I urge you to hunt it down. I am sure you will be moved by his sense of humour; his biting political insight into not only the Colonialist regime but most features of most governments; his dedication to his art which, while at times left him eating raw cabbage in the public gardens, never saw him abandon his typewriter; and most notably, his literary style: - honest and confronting, yet soft and lyrical.
I go on.

back for an instant

That's half of it.

1.43 pm

and next time i'll post the other side of this one. It's a bit depressing.

painted on half a curtain.