PROFILING NICK MAKOHA (UGANDA) #BABISHAI2015 SHORTLIST

Nick Bio:Nick represented Uganda at Poetry Parnassus as part of the Cultural Olympiad. A former Writer in Residence for Newham Libraries. His 1-man-Show My Father & Other Superheroes debuted to sold-out performances at 2013 London Literature Festival and is currently on tour. He has been a panelist at both the inaugural Being A Man Festival (Fatherhood: Past, Present & Future) and Women Of The World Festival (Bringing Up Boys). In 2005 award-winning publisher Flippedeye launched its pamphlet series with his debut The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man. Soon to publish his 1st full collection The Second Republic from which his poem Resurrection Man was shortlisted for the Flamingo feather poetry competition 2013.He was a joint winner of the 2015 African Poetry Brunel Prize.

His shortlisted poems for the #Babishai2015 Poetry Award are below:

LHR:  by Nick Makoha (Uganda)

An airport is a room. I keep talking as if my body is elsewhere. 

In full sight of a crimson God as children we were burdens,

coffins with eyes. A professor steps into the light to educate us.

You can't kill the dead twice. Has he seen the militia slide down

a mountain like goats, or a beatingheart explode on to a barrack wall?

Even the coffee I brought back in hand luggage when poured in a cup

is an eye, a past dark itching for light.Therefore, I cannot be the memory

of your death, let me bend the waya river does, all shadow and sound,

around a hill, towards a village I once recognised. There are days

when this unplanned landscape speaks its music, above a ribbon of stars,

below a wall of torn out tents and beyond a river waiting as one would

the apocalypse. On other daysyouare a name on a list, given to armed men 

at a roadblock. Guns held loosely by their waist. Hovering as catfish

in a shallow pool. Before roads led to you, or Livingston's maps found you,

before the mountains grew their backs, before sight was tempered,

before the revelation on a skies blank page in this perfect chalice of night

you are not the first pilgrim to ask the oracle what will I become me.

If I could  stop the sky from stretching its arms across the horizon, 

or the serpent Nile opening it's mouth toward a sea, or star blinking

in a midnight constellation as god watches your wife wash silk in a stream

would I not stopped our countries screams. I have the luck of Caesar 

his robe his crown and quest for immortality but soon this course

of blue and the way it bends  will have no need of me.

                        Death-fall    by Nick Makoha (Uganda)

Before Koni, before Museveni, before Obote’s second term, before now

there was me. We were in deep Shit! Bridges couldn’t be fixed with gaffer-tape.

America stopped lending plasticine to fill pot-holes. I quit playing refugee.

Who among you was going to pay our country’s light bill?  Well? You uninvited guests

like Rome, you will know where we put the bodies in their tunics and kangas. My sins,

both real and imagined, into the trap. To my brother my rival, when he comes

don’t let him tap the glass (idiots), devise his death. You stable-god,

a month’s worth of grain for the paratroop regiment won’t purge you. 

New wives and shoes and a move to State House while we live in huts.

Home will see your troubles cursed. By the way, your Chief of Police,

into the trap. You who believed in Churchill’s prophecy. You innocents

ruled by a spinning earth, your tears will quench the barns we set fire to.

You who call your guns She.You papiermâché martyrs with north Kiboko accents.

You shadow soldiers who dig dead men from their graves. You in the motion of battle.

You who search the airwaves for the British World Service, who stare

spirits in the face but can’t stand heights, the rules say, into the trap.

I will not forgive the clan who sheds blood for party politics. Your god might.

The one with his hands up as he waves, ask the firing squad to send him

with the widowers, orphans and motherless sons, into the trap.

All you disciples of empires.Mr Men ministers who paraphrase over PA systems,

into the trap. Wrecked after five days of being held under decree nineteen.

Why riffle through your Yellow pages in search of Heads-of-state? Into the trap.

The executioner who lets you watch his navel after bare-knuckle fights, into the trap.

 You who played The Bard on screen and stage, or quoted Aristotle, into the trap.

Your second tongue, into the trap. Lumino-boy with that Yankee

dialect, into the trap. It makes no difference to me, you sun worshiper.

Name your Icarus and fly, into the trap. You who abandon your wife’s thighs

for the cradle of a servant girl, into the trap. You at The Uganda Company Limited

(Trojans), because you gave us cotton but took our land, follow me with your horse mask,

into the trap. Those who offer me your skins as a fig leaf, let me carve a map

on your backs to Ithaca. You can hitchhike for all I care, into the trap. Take your stand

with the soothsayer in her snake dress. The ones who hesitate, into the trap.

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The #Babishai2015 poetry festival runs from26 to 28 August at The Uganda Museum in Kampala.
Tel: +256 751 703226
Email: bnpoetryaward@bnpoetryaward.co.ug

PROFILING ADEEKO IBUKUN (NIGERIA) #BABISHAI2015 SHORTLIST

Adeeko Ibukun lives and writes from Abeokuta, Nigeria. His works has been published in different journals and anthologies including the Sentinel Annual Literary Anthology (SALA, 2012). His poem, Breathing History, was awarded the second place in the Sentinel All African Poetry competition, 2012. He is currently working on his first book of poems.

His shortlisted poem is below:

A ROOM WITH A DROWNING BOOK  by Adeeko Ibukun (Nigeria)

Somewhere in the room a book is drowning, the floor

is shivering with pages. You said the spine is the balance

to our two winged hearts. Sometimes it’s the light knitting

its letters to our hearts. I see how things hold us in their lights

so we aren’t here or there like you’re here and somewhere

a lover holds you in her heart, light in water teaching these lessons.

Sometimes something holds clearly what we couldn’t say in words.

We face it to learn our silence and that again becomes part of

our languages. Places own us like this, light bounces off them,

turning their spears at me. Our hearts beat now and vision takes

its shapes—the stream of consciousness, nuances as water turn,

streamlet as novella lost in our undercurrent.  I’m lost in a story now

or a story’s lost in me. Perhaps we should hang on words so that

we do not drown. Remembering makes living its anchor. So I asked

if it’s us you wanted to save insisting everything  is placed this way

and that way of our anniversaries, each moment  achieved  as light

buried in water—so it’s here or there, past or present, our chairs and tables,

dresser and records becoming the dykes. The mirror’s at an angle

to the world so it does not yield all its light at once. Everything’s our

subject before we become their subject, relying on memories to endure.

The #Babishai2015 Festival runs from 26t to 28 August at The Uganda Museum.           

Tel: +256 751 703226

Facebook: Babishai Poetry Festival

Profiling Sanya Noel (Kenya) #Babishai2015 shortlist

Sanya Noel lives in Nairobi where he works as an Industrial Security Systems Technician. He writes poems (mostly) and short stories, though he sometimes pretends he can do essays. His works have been published in a few spaces here and there, but he rarely gets the time to write nowadays. So he concentrates on doing short random stories and poems about his experiences as he goes around Nairobi. When he isn’t trying to pay his bills(and not writing either), you may find him seated at public parks, most times with a book, definitely alone, at times reading, at times just seated, and of course bothering no one.

A Poem We Would Rather Forget  by Sanya Noel (Kenya)

thirty one years after the Wagalla Massacre

This is what you remember                 the butt of a gun landing to your mouth

                                                            and then the muzzle pushed

way down your throat

                                                            and all you could pray for

                                                            was for them to pull the trigger.

This is what happened                                    they came for you in lorries

and you were innocent enough to think

that a Kenyan citizenship

would shield you from harm.

This is what followed                         they asked for your clan

but how could you tell that

saying you were of the Degodia Clan

was signing your own death warrant?

These are the memories                       naked bellies on the asphalt

and boots with guns

stepping on their heads and necks.

These are the memories                       gunshots ringing

and truncheons landing on chests

and the cracking of sternums

and the giving in of skulls.

These are the memories                       every sternum broken, was your sternum broken

every skull smashed in, was your skull smashed in

and every thud of a truncheon, was a thud to your soul.

This was your decision                        you were going to die anyway

but the fear in you

couldn’t let you die just lying on the ground.

This was your luck                              the terror made you run so fast

even the bullets couldn’t catch up with you.

This is your regret                               you wish you had died too

so you would be relieved of memories

of cracking sternums and skulls smashed in

of unheeded cries for mercy, and prayers to God.

This is what you wish for                    a chance to forget

that on this day, thirty one years ago

five thousand people were executed

by their own country.

These are your questions                     Do the dead move on?

Did the ground ever quench

its thirst for Somali blood?

The winner will be announced during the #Babishai2015 festival, 26 to 28 August at The Uganda Museum, Kampala.

bnpoetryaward@bnpoetryaward.co.ug