Becoming The Muse

Starfish Blossoms

Starfish Blossoms is a book of poety by Samantha Rumbidzai Vazhure. The book won the 2023 National Arts Merit Award (NAMA) for best poetry book. Starfish Blossoms was published in October 2022 by Carnelian Heart Publishing Ltd.

Starfish Blossoms is an invitation to explore and celebrate a garden of womanhood in bloom. From Afro-hair forming golden halos in the sun to half-closed pink orchids in bloom and of course the titular Starfish blossoms: splendid, despite their pungent odour, perfumed yet pungent, tender yet rough.

The book opens with an almost philosophic introduction by Marian Christie that is as insightful as it is complimentary to the journey you about to embark on between the pages of Starfish Blossoms. Part of the text from this introduction appears in the book’s blurb and perfectly summarises Samantha’s body of work.

"Resilience - in particular the resilience of women - is at the heart of this gloriously vibrant collection... Vazhure guides us through the complexity of human relationships, deftly navigating between memories and dreamscapes, vivid narratives and internal dialogues, tumultuous physical encounters and quiet contemplation. The emotional register is wide-ranging. Love, grief, betrayal, desire and suffering are unflinchingly laid bare in richly textured poems with striking use of sensory imagery... Read this collection. You are in for a treat."

The Good

Samantha uses her words unapologetically to tell compelling and vivid narratives punctuated with descriptive imagery that will invade your senses and dare you to experience the immortality in the voices of the women who speak through her poetry.

It is said that to know where you are going you should know where you come from, Samantha honours the women who have shaped her journey before her, VaChivi – the lioness, her paternal grandmother, aChihera – Chirambakusakara her maternal grandmother, her mother(s) in different forms.

The book boldly embraces identity and in between the words you will find Chikaranga phrases (a ChiShona dialect) and there are local folklores woven into the tapestry of tales a celebration of who we are. Hanyanani the ghost from Chivi, that old lady from Chivi who cooked stones and drank the soup.. The book comes with a Glossary of Shona and Zimbabwean colloquial terminology so if not familiar with language you wont miss out on the magic.

A page a poem… Its very easy to flip from page to page until before you know it, there is no other page to turnover… but then you can start all over again because some of the poems need a second reading. With the exception of Starfish Blossoms and 2 other poems in the book all the poems were formatted to not take up more than a page.

I found the formatting fun and artistic some of the poems look artsy all by themselves. Flipping through the pages of Starfish blossoms is like taking a walk a in garden with different eye catching wonders.

The Bad

The poetry is not formulaic and each poem is a story on its own with a unique layout and structure.. and like lightning would never strike the same place twice no matter how much you will it.  Some of the pieces end on a dramatic note that will leave you curious to know what ever happened next, but that’s all you get.

The Ugly

Starfish Blossoms is not all sunshine and rainbows, its got grief, suffering and loss, loss of family, loss of innocence, and all the terrible things women have to endure at the hands with of men.

Some parts are difficult to read but as they say truth is ugly.

Final Thoughts

Starfish Blossoms is inspired by the Starfish Cacti Flower Stapelia grandiflora. A prickly succulent plant, highly resilient, which blooms into star shaped flowers with a rather stinky smell for attracting flies and insects that pollinate the blooms.

The Starfish flower isn’t something you easily take to but it kinda grows on you just like it grows in a rocky dry patch of field…

I had the honour of attending the book launch ceremony for Starfish Blossoms which you can read about over Coffee and Starfish Blossoms.