Literature & Ideas
Landmark
Steve Chimombo
1945 – 2015
Napolo Poems, and a career at the head of Malawian letters
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Malawi Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
Poet, playwright, editor and professor, and by wide agreement one of the leading writers Malawi has produced.
Steve Bernard Miles Chimombo taught English at the University of Malawi at Chancellor College for most of his career, and wrote through the whole of Hastings Banda's rule — which meant writing in a country where the censorship board read everything and writers went to prison.
His answer was myth. Napolo, in Malawian belief, is the serpent that lives under the mountain and brings the landslides and floods; Chimombo built a body of poetry around it, beginning with Napolo Poems in 1987, in which the disaster that arrives from underground and cannot be named directly carries an obvious second meaning. The censors could hardly ban a folk figure. The Rainmaker, his play on the Mbona cult of the Lower Shire, works the same way.
He also wrote fiction, children's books and criticism, edited the journal WASI on Malawian arts, and produced with his wife a bibliography of Malawian writing that is still the standard reference. He was, for a generation of Malawian writers, the professor who told them their own material was worth using.
He died in 2015. His son and his wife have both continued in Malawian letters.
His answer was myth. Napolo, in Malawian belief, is the serpent that lives under the mountain and brings the landslides and floods; Chimombo built a body of poetry around it, beginning with Napolo Poems in 1987, in which the disaster that arrives from underground and cannot be named directly carries an obvious second meaning. The censors could hardly ban a folk figure. The Rainmaker, his play on the Mbona cult of the Lower Shire, works the same way.
He also wrote fiction, children's books and criticism, edited the journal WASI on Malawian arts, and produced with his wife a bibliography of Malawian writing that is still the standard reference. He was, for a generation of Malawian writers, the professor who told them their own material was worth using.
He died in 2015. His son and his wife have both continued in Malawian letters.
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