Book Review with Jerry Zondo

RABISON SHUMBA is a coach and motivational speaker, who has decided to use the emotive and evocative power of poetry to address his audience.

Title: Showers of Inspiration: Poems from the Heart

Author: Rabison Shumba

Publisher: Greatness Factory Publishers

Year of publication: 2014

Pages: 66

ISBN: 978-1-312-29530-8

RABISON SHUMBA is a coach and motivational speaker, who has decided to use the emotive and evocative power of poetry to address his audience.

Normally, prose is preferred for talks to change attitudes and beliefs in people. Poetry works at different platforms and would not immediately be used in face-to-face encounters with people harbouring doubt and those that have experienced trauma.

Shumba has used verse to light up the mood in people lacking motivation and doubting their abilities to lead positive and successful lives.

Most of all, Shumba speaks to the “ambitious, dreamers, and success seekers’’, who have less to hold onto because they have not yet achieved or reached their destinies.
Most of all, Shumba speaks to the “ambitious, dreamers, and success seekers’’, who have less to hold onto because they have not yet achieved or reached their destinies.

Shumba does indicate in a dedication that his poems would reverberate in the minds of readers and be the stuff for action where voices have not been heard (as if crying in a wilderness), or “ignored, suppressed or denied the opportunities to be heard”.

Most of all, Shumba speaks to the “ambitious, dreamers, and success seekers’’, who have less to hold onto because they have not yet achieved or reached their destinies.

Shumba’s philosophy emerges in all his poems, but the captivating apex is the Come Get Me!! poem where the persona – a diamond in the depth of the earth – invites any person to dig it out, possess it and ensure a rich and fulfilling life.

Each poem works out as a story that should be enacted in the mind of a reader and given the life and the breath that it should be surviving with.

Shumba’s anthology is divided into segments that he calls chapters: Personal Motivation and Inspiration (13 poems); Humanity, Ubuntu, Tolerance (8 poems); Deep Emotional Reflections (8 poems); Africa, My home, My Delight (3 poems); Love and Relationships (9 poems); Nature Speaks – the World Around Us (4 poems).

Chirikure Chirikure, a dub poet, musician, teacher, writer, culture expert and actor, has written the foreword to the poems.

Shumba uses simple reader-friendly language in keeping with mentorship, consultancy and coaching sessions.

The everyday, conversational language brings the poems closer to the lives and experiences of readers rendering the prose familiar and reachable.

Mainstream diction develops a closer touch with the heart and points to the tenderer and deeper reflections that the soul should undergo in transforming an individual and making her reach for greater personal and professional heights. The language inspires, encourages, invokes and urges.

Poetic techniques of repetition and its guises – rhyme, alliteration, assonance – personification, metaphor, pun, couplets, triplets and stanza forms abound in the poems.

Typical linkages form has been exploited in initial, medial and final verse positions. It is clear that the poetic structures have been heavily influenced by poetry from the author’s home language.

Shumba’s anthology has seven pages of endorsements by readers/reviewers. Zimbabweans, Americans, Canadians, Italians, and Namibian actors, bloggers, poets, novelists, playwrights, economists, students, preachers, teachers and inspirational speakers have commented on his work. That audience is useful in promoting the aims of his poetry.

Shumba has written other books which include The Greatness Manual: Recipes for Perpetual Success, Fountain of Inspiration – Vol 1 and Incredible Power Statements for Your Success and Fountain of Inspiration – Vol 2.

He has contributed articles to journals like the Turnaround Management Journal. He is a mentor and runs a motivational speaking and training consultancy. He runs Greatness Factory Trust and a mentorship programme.

Mentorship and motivation are meant to inspire and push a person into being brave enough and sufficiently informed to make personal choices that would guide and lead one into a productive life. They lead one into finding purpose in life and growing into a useful and thriving individual.

Avid poetry readers will find Shumba’s poems absorbing and captivating.

Jonah Nyoni, Colin Nyathi, Kilton Moyo, BK Sibanda and Innocent Ngenga are some of the specialists in Shumba’s field. They all have written motivational books.