Vanessa Chisakula, a.k.a Van-Van, is a Zambian page and spoken word poet; the author of the chapbook Africana. She uses poetry as an activism tool to address issues of prime concern: social justice and women’s rights. She has been published in the women scream anthology 20′, has received fellowship from MILEAD in 2019, and her piece “her place” has bagged an award to her name. She is the co-founder and curator of the Pan-Africanist Social Movement called Word Smash Poetry which uses art to promote youth’s participation in governance issues.

Precious Okpechi: Hello Vanessa, I am delighted to have you as our New Poet for the month. You curate and coordinate the Word Smash Poetry; tell me the bigger vision behind the event and its role in the African literary scene.

Vanessa Chisakula: Word Smash is a creative-free expression movement of Southern African youth artivist. Its main thrust is to provide a platform for young creative activists and artivists to speak truth and power through spoken word poetry. In a continent with a questionable rate of illiteracy, spoken word poetry encourages curiosity and exposes people to literature from a range of cultures around the world. Writing is central to every profession so this is a key skill across all sectors. The platform promotes free expression in spoken word; it’s not so much a commercial venture as it’s an attempt to make a positive impact on youth. The platform brings together older practitioners of literature with the younger practitioners to encourage and inspire them and to give them an idea of the trajectory for a literary career. Continentally, we aim to develop and promote literature, poetry, and spoken word and to make mainstream its role in social development. In partnership with various art organizations and venues, the company facilitates events and projects that connect local and regional practitioners of literature to share knowledge, collaborate on new works, encourage and inspire them.

Precious Okpechi: You have received fellowships from the SADC Theatre Camp, MILEAD. What is the relevance of these institutions and how have they shaped your art?

Vanessa Chisakula: The SADC Theatre camp has contributed immensely to the theatre industry in the region since its inception. If the saying “practice makes perfect” should be regarded as anything, then providing a platform to perfect the art is one way to look at it: a platform where mid-career professionals can realize their full potential. As a poet, the camp helped me take a more progressive path in the way I tell my story. It doesn’t end here. The camp has gotten me access to veterans in the field and a new community I can turn to. MILEAD fellowship has been a life-changing experience for me as a young woman in more ways than one. It serves as an opportunity for young women from Africa and the diaspora to have a scaffold in their aspiration for leadership roles; they are exposed to a group of women leaders committed to supporting and nurturing the next generation of African women leaders, focusing on education, mentorship, networking and professional internships, and also offering resource assistance. MILEAD has helped me in telling my stories (activism-wise) from an informed standpoint and also without fear. It helped me focus on the woman I can be to benefit society and me. I gained mentors and a huge network of fellows who are now my sisters for life.

Precious: One of the central themes in your work is the woman. In “enemy within,” you talk about how women are dangers to women, and in “her place,” you reject the position patriarchy has placed women in. How does your identity as a woman influence your writing?

Vanessa: A wise man once said, “you either shape your identity or it shapes you.” My identity as a woman has pushed me into a place of appreciating and celebrating the woman in me and the one around me. I speak fearlessly and mostly possess authority on the subject because I am telling the story first hand. The “enemy within” is someone I have been to myself and maybe another woman out there; “her place” is a reminder for whenever I am going against my self and whenever I see a woman who needs the reminder. I am a mother, sister, daughter, aunt, lover and these roles are the beautiful stories I recreate daily, weaving them into the beautiful lyrics I call my poetry.

Precious: Your spoken word pieces are laced with your native language. Do you think having access to more than one language inspires your art in a way monolingualism wouldn’t?

Vanessa: Language is power. It commands understanding and response from a community. We write for ourselves first and then for the world to hear the stories – to cry, celebrate, and walk with us in our various journeys. Monolingualism becomes disadvantageous, at times, because we seek to appeal to different and wider audiences and what better way to do that than to diversify one’s tongue.

Precious: As an actress, do you think acting is a true artistic expression seeing as you are mostly fulfilling the director’s or screenwriter’s vision rather than your own?

Vanessa: I find it funny that acting has been viewed in this way where less artistic expression is brought to the table. We need to understand it’s all about trust: a writer trusts a director with their story, an actor interprets the emotions in the best possible way, a director, with vigilance, tries to bring words to life through a living body. It’s artistic and will always be. In the moment of the act, you shed off yourself to become another.

Unmistaken ID

Nothing is more absurd than the pursuit of happiness
To think it is evoked,
from your belly, meaning it’s been with you
always, like the concept of home –
Here. Now. Africa
Have you seen my black? 
My skin? Loud proclamations
of who I am as seen
My forefathers had skin like polished brass
shiny but not ostentatious

The rising sun hits me in a field
not because I am chained and dragged –
I am one with the land, produce of the ruins 
Inzalo Y’langa – birthplace of the sun
The blood of my aggrieved ancestors sweats out of my body
My feet are products of walking on, empire after empire 

I descend from men who shocked 
the world with their possessions of gold 
Remember Mansa Musa. The empire of Ghana. The Kingdom of Kongo 
The great Zimbabwe. And Benin 
Colonization is a sick attempt
at proving a point. 

Let me show you what power
looks like: how I strut on this land, 
past your false doctrines, reclaiming my blood,
the history of my home. The door of no return broke
and I swear, I am African again.

What We Paint

I have always steered away 
from images – permanent, as words

telling stories beyond
the eyes, and since I never want to delve
into the inner parts of me, I don’t pose

Here is a universe
tearing from her every opening

Nothing you make of this will leave
a dent: the colours of your imagination
are not enough paint to recreate this moment

This image is stuck up for everyone to see

More foe than friend, every time
I gaze at it, my eyes speaking with a foreign
tongue, I meet me again

for the first time. There is an aggressive grip
on my wrist as I am taken for a walk

This lane is tagged with the noise
of crumpled memories