John Eppel

John Eppel (born 19 September 1947) is a Zimbabwean short story writer, novelist and poet. In 1990 he was awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize for his poetry volume, "Spoils of War", detailing his experiences as a soldier in the Rhodesian Bush War. Quotes When they cried freedom, when the sweet mingling of woodsmoke and jasmine with dust - grass, granite, antelope bone - gathered into wrists which turned light the colour of blood, darkness a memory of the colour of blood - when their voices lifted that song and sent it echoing A poem on Jasmine. About age 12. Around that time I stopped believing in God, I became consciously aware of my mortality, I began to feel uneasy about my privileged status as a white boy, and I fell in love with a girl who barely noticed me. So even at that age, it was a sense of loss combined with a flair for rhyme, which made me want to become a writer. Perhaps because I’m left-handed, I think metaphorically, which is the way lyric poets apprehend the world. He spoke about his writing My main concern in my poetry is to find a voice, which merges British form (prosody) with African content (mostly nature) so that, if not in my life, in my art, I can find an identity which is not binary, not black/white, African/European colonizer/colonized. My main concern in my prose is to ridicule greed, cruelty, self-righteousness and related vices like racism, sexism, jingoism, and homophobia. The same challenges that most Zimbabweans face, linked to the economic collapse of the country: how to pay the bills, how to put food on the table; how to stay alive as long as possible because it’s too expensive to get sick and die. There is no social welfare left in this country, the extended family system has collapsed; pension funds and other savings have been looted by people with huge bellies and wallets of flesh on the backs of their necks. If the form of my poetry is thoroughly European, its content is thoroughly African.’ External links Category:1947 births