Ungentle Touch: Poems from the fireplace of arrested love is Titus Bonie Moetsabi's third published collection of poetry, bringing together soft and light verse on the subject of love and relationships, particularly those that are subjected to separation and distance. Here are more than forty poems that mix sensuality and philosophy in a playful manner as they explore the different aspects of love and longing. At times arousing, at times tender, Ungentle Touch is a highly personal book of poetry composed by Moetsabi while living and working in Kabul, Afghanistan, some four thousand miles away from his wife and family in Harare, Zimbabwe.Ungentle Touch has a universal appeal that speaks across borders and cultures. The poems draw upon the poet's first-hand experiences of missing his wife, children, friends, and home during periods of absence, while also revealing the comfort and hospitality afforded to him by his hosts in the more than forty cities and four different continents he has visited in his lifetime. It is an evocative and emotional volume that casts the poet as an itinerant troubadour who travels to the ends of the earth facing hardship, conflict, and the possibility of death in order to protect and provide for his wife, children, relatives, friends, and native homeland. As such, it is the lyrical, plaintive song of a brave warrior crying for love, reflecting on love, and awaiting reunion with loved ones.This is sensual poetry about mutual yearning and the promise of an eventual, ecstatic homecoming. Beyond the physical and sexual, the poems also map the landscape of other loves-spiritual, national, reflexive, political, social, and natural-as well as the paradoxes of love. Powerful and passionate, delicate and sensitive, Ungentle Touch captures the mixture of feelings, fantasy, and shared realities experienced by lovers enduring separation, solitude, and sacrifice while navigating feelings of longing, agony, and hope.
About the Author: Titus Bonie Moetsabi was born in Gweru, Zimbabwe and grew up in the country's two largest cities, Bulawayo and Harare. Moetsabi began writing poetry at Cyrene Secondary School and Mpopoma High School. He read Law at the University of Zimbabwe and was a member of the University drama group. Moetsabi holds a Master of Science in Strategic Management from Derby University in the United Kingdom and is also a Chartered Public Relations and Communications Practitioner registered in South Africa. He has published two collections of poems, Fruits and Other Poems in 1998 and Fated Changes in 2002, and his poetry has appeared in the anthologies, Coming Home and New Accents One as well as on the Poetry International website. In 1995, he received a prize for his poetry in Smederevo, Serbia. He has accompanied his poetry with music as a member of Alcyti Dub Poets. Moetsabi co-founded the theater group, Zambuko/Izibuko, with which he co-wrote and acted in three major productions, Mavambo, Katshaa! and Mandela-The Spirit of No Surrender. He founded Savannah Arts in Zimbabwe's oldest high density suburb, Mbare as an arts platform for rehabilitating street children as well as providing confidence for self-employment and self-reliance to ghetto youths. He has actively voluntarily participated in leading Zimbabwe Association of Community Theatre; Zimbabwe Association of Theatre for Children and Young People, and the Children's Performance Arts Workshop (CHIPAWO) towards global recognition. Moetsabi has lived and worked in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Namibia, and South Africa. He currently works in international development in Kabul, Afghanistan, while his family lives in Harare.