Frank Chipasula

Frank Chipasula Poems

Frank Chipasula Biography

Frank Mkalawile Chipasula (born 16 October 1949, Zambia) is a Malawian writer, editor and university professor, "easily one of the best of the known writers in the discourse of Malawian letters". Born in Luanshya, Frank Chipasula attended St. Peter's Primary School on Likoma Island, Soche Hill Day Secondary School, Malosa Secondary School, Chancellor College, University of Malawi, and, finally, the Great East Road Campus of the University of Zambia, Lusaka, where he was graduated B.A., in exile, in 1976. Before leaving Malawi, Chipasula had worked as a freelance broadcaster for the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation while studying English and French at the university. In Lusaka, he served as English Editor for the National Education Company of Zambia, his first publishers, following his graduation from the University of Zambia. In 1978 Chipasula went into exile in the United States as a result of the Hastings Banda government, studying for his M.A. in Creative Writing at Brown University, a second M.A. in African American Studies at Yale University and gaining a Ph.D in English literature from Brown University in 1987 Previously a professor of Black Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Howard University, Chipasula has also worked as the education attache at the Malawian embassy in Washington, D.C.. His first book,Visions and Reflections (1972), is also the first published poetry volume in English by a Malawian writer. As well as poetry, which has been widely anthologised, he has written radio plays and fiction. Since January 10, 1976, Chipasula has been married to Stella, a former school teacher, whom he met in Mulanje, Malawi, in 1972. They have two grown children, James Masauko Mgeni Akuzike and Helen Chipo.)

The Best Poem Of Frank Chipasula

A Poem For Martyrs' Day

The first vowel of pain
pierces the night, O!

We recoil in our nightmares,
hearing a man scream like sheep
under a merciless knife.

The cry coils about the midnight
pitch darkness, out of Chingwe's

Hole and Mikuyu Prison Farm.
It strikes our hearts like a Black

Mamba crested with a deadly moon,
a rainbow of blood draped over
the bowed moon's hidden arrow.

The hills are aflame with dirges,
the valleys sob silently, afraid
of Special Branch ears—

The shock waves spread like
hot butter on this stale land.

The psalms raise the alms in the burnt
incense of dark human flesh
in the dawn of Palm Sunday.

Martyrs' Day: All quiet—the night's
Murder well hushed. All quiet.

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