HARDSON,JUST ANOTHER POET?

By
Dave Mankhokwe Namusanya

SINCE that hour and day I talked to him, my personal perception, of not only life and poetry, but also him as a person has been greatly altered. It has changed completely. Greatly reconstructed.

His name is Hardson Chamasowa Davie, he claims, nothing more nor less. He celebrates his birthdays every 21st day of the second month of the year since 1987 AD when he was delivered into this world at some village in Balaka, T/A Kalembo’s area, known as Zalengera.

Possibly, he is a man who has seen a lot in life having started his primary school at Binoni primary in Balaka where he did standards 1 up to 6 before proceeding to Naisi primary in Blantyre where he did the remaining two classes. From there, he was selected to Mtendere Secondary school in Dedza where after a successful completion of the secondary education he was matriculated into the Bachelor of Arts program at the Chancellor College of the University of Malawi.

But, he is not only a student. He also is, little known, an actor, and, very known, a poet who delights in vernacular poetry. One can argue, he is following the footsteps of the University registrar, Benedicto Wokomaatani Malunga; but he himself says no. ‘I look at Nyamalikiti Nthiwatiwa (Chisomo Mdalla) as my role model, I admire his poetry,’ he reveals.

His poetry is multi-faced. It tears and pricks on various topics and comes in varying styles and ways. Sometimes, it is outright humorous while in other cases it is controversial and worse still, downright obscene until it is censored as it happened with the poem that can be said to have brought him into the limelight, Telala.

The expression on his face changes when asked about the poem that was once banned from being broadcast for its content before it was edited. He seems to smile but once he starts speaking on the poem, the smile dissolves:

‘I hate the poem myself,’ he says regretting, ‘it isn’t universal. Parents cannot listen to it together with their children, it sounds obscene.’

Then, almost as a contradiction, he announces:

‘But I’ve incorporated it in my album entitled Ku Smongolia. People have pressurized me to do so for they seem to be deep in love with the ironic poem; and then, what could I do to please my fans? I write for them.’

And, the fans will not only be entertained by Telala and Ku Smongolia for his poetry album, currently the first to be done by a Chanco student, has a whole eighteen full poems. All those eighteen are meant for entertainment and education. It is an album for each and every individual, he narrates.

‘And my aim for making it is to reach to those who cannot access the poems through the radios (especially Joy fm),’ he concludes on the poetry album.

Listening to his narration, one might be tempted to think all is rosy for him as a vernacular poet and a person but he asserts that it is not when confronted with the question. All the vernacular poets have got one outlet to release their poetry; that coupled with the lack of the majority’s interests in vernacular poetry are major problems and also, if you think it a problem, his being without a lover both on campus and at home for the mere reason that the girl he loved, wished and desired to have betrayed him.

How? one wonders but he does not respond. Instead, he develops a smile: a broad, deep and genuine smile. It is not just a smile of an actor or a poet but a writer also and a parrarel student whose hardest times are when he is at school as there is nobody to financially support him in one way or the other, a fact that many are not aware of. The smile that is mostly on his face beguiles all his financial woes.