a few poems

Kampala
The taxi park is our city’s armpit.
The roads are built like boiled spaghetti
thrown in a higgledy-piggledly pile.

Sipi Falls, North-Eastern Uganda.
Your shadow wets the red coffee berries.
You make Mt. Elgon want to blush,
Women wash their clothes in your tears.

Bujumbura
My thumbprint covers Burundi on the map.
Lake Tanganyika’s splashes cool the hot town
Poverty is a boat on Lake Tanganyika,
sailing like a boomerang.

Secrets about Lamwaka of the Caine Prize

L-A-M-W-A-K-A 2011 CAINE!!!!!!!!

She comes from Alokolum in Gulu and studied at Kangole Girls’ Primary School in Karamoja where she fled with her bitutwa (Bitutwa are plaits that look like black maggots) flying in the wind, as a result of the unrest in Gulu. Labeaty, is what her close friends call her. Her first email address was labeaty2001@yahoo.com. Do you remember when we first got email addresses which had years tagged to them? If you got your email address in 2012 then you were seemefly2012@hilarious.com. Labeaty was one of those people.
At FEMRITE, which she joined in 1999, while still an undergraduate at Makerere University, scrimmaging for literary abundance which was in plenty while Goretti still its Coordinator then, would dole out.
So anyway, Labeaty is one of those phlegmatics who does not really prescribe to the template of phlegs and she really likes eating bananas and taking tea with entangawizi. Why am I talking about Beatrice? She was shortlisted for the Caine Prize, she is my dear friend and I am the only interviewer so far who knew that she studied from Kangole Girls, which by the way is on the internet, mbu they used to wear cute short blue sleeveless dresses for uniform. Labeaty says that you pick the uniform from the school and leave them there. (Giggle giggle). So, she has been shortlisted for the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story, Butterfly Dreams which was published in 2010 in the anthology entitled Butterfly Dreams and other stories by CCC press in the UK.
We are certain the prize will come to East Africa again, because others on the short list are from SADC. Raise your glasses as we toast, raise your bananas as we boast, Beatrice Lamwaka.

Obushera-dedicated to Katie and Billy on their Kasiki

Obushera by BNN

I am like the porridge, Obushera.
Uninteresting, cold and limp.
You pour cold water over me
I jerk into semi-lifelessness.
You mix me round and round in your coldness
You mix me with your wooden spoon.
Just a little heat to animate me.
Smiling now, moving, excited.
The heat makes me rise
Up down
Up down
Yes… Yes…
Move me… move me…Higher higher
Faster faster
You stop to taste the Bushera
Not yet ready.
I rise higher
Bubbles of elation burst all over you.
You turn off the heat
I am now ready.

If my father had a chance to walk.....

If my father had a chance, he would most certainly have wanted to walk to work, run with his children and even swim in the lake. Unfortunately, for the last 13 years of his life he was unable to. This was not because the police arrested him for walking to work whenever he had a chance but because he was shot by some merciless army men in the late 1970s, after which he led a sedentary life until his death.
Yesterday, I felt like waking him up to tell him that now I can’t walk. Of course, he would have been concerned...have the buggers done it again? Have they shot you too? But no, dad, I wasn’t shot, nobody shot me, the buggers just arrested me.
“What?” my dad would have said. They arrested you for walking?” Were you trespassing?”
“No, dad, I was just walking to work. I had my laptop on my back and comfortable shoes and the police arrested me, okay not just me, there were a bunch of us.”
“Nambozo were you doing anything illegal?”
“No, dad, it’s just that the fuel prices have really gone up and food is exhorbitant. I’ve even started planting maize and beans at home because I can hardly afford buying from the market anymore.”
“Nambozo, I thought things were better now with this President?”
“Dad, there’s just so much you don’t know. I’ll tell you all about it when we meet, which won’t be soon. Maybe that time, we’ll have a new President, who knows?”
“Dad, when you were young, did Africa still have a problem of leaders not wanting to let go?”
“Ha ha Nambozo, Africans are good at heart but you must understand that when poor people suddenly get a hold of money, they don’t know how to use it wisely and so need more and more because it keeps running out.”
“Okay, Dad now I understand. And money is symbolic for wealth, but also power, right?”
“Yes, dear.”

what's my family doing in the papers?

We were at Uganda Wildlife Education Center in 2009, my brother's birthday.

We are such an average family but in the past two weeks, my mum, sister and myself have appeared in the family. The links are below so if you want to read, rock away.

My sister's is here below
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/9/507/750816

My mum's article is here below,
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/9/37/749770

Well, there was a smal snippet of me telling the world how I did not know that World Poetry Day fell on 21st March-lol.
So all those that submitted for this year's poetry award-thank you, I have got 102 submissions which is more than double the previous' years, now it it time for the judges to get busy.
Good weekend and some recommendations of good books and movies are For Colored girls, the movie, Tourist the movie, Fracture the movie and for books-you must read Cutting for Stone.
Later...

21st March World Poetry Day-Just as surprised as you are!

This is my daughter Zion by the fish tank at China Bowl Restaurant. Children and water are very important elements to me as a writer.
I am a struggling poet, who, after finding it such an upheaval task to write a good sonnet and find at least two readers who will understand my rhyme, then someone tells me it’ s World Poetry Day, March 21st. By the way thanks Ben Oluka. I looked into my overwhelming source of embarrassment at this lack of knowledge but unflinchingly, I convinced myself that I was glad to be learning something new. This is what I have learned thanks to the search engines that have taken over our traditional libraries.
World Poetry Day is on 21 March, and was declared by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1999. The purpose of the day is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout THE WORLD (Wikipedia) It was generally celebrated in October, sometimes on the 25th, but in the latter part of the 18th Century the world community celebrated it on 31 October, the birthday of Virrina rominouse maximus, the Roman epic poet and poet laureate under Augustus. (Wikipedia).
Now that I know that for centuries communities somewhere have been celebrating the teaching of this great art from which eruptions of discussion, argument on its form and structure, contemporary poetry battling it out with traditional forms and so on, I am quite pleased. Discussions of poetry for me make my brain work and appreciate that good art takes great work. Was it one of the Bronte sisters who decided that for a good writer, you either chose the art or the other path of life like marriage and family but you could not have both. Delving into this is like trying to split a mustard seed. Poetry does not come easy. Those who say or think it does are possibly the type of poet whose poem fades away as fast as water washes over a print in the sand. X.J Kennedy said, Poetic fame, like sea-water isn’t worth thirsting for. And also that You don’t need to publish a thousand poems in order o become immortal; you need publish only one poem, if it’s good enough.
Such sentiments make me feel like collecting all the poems I have ever shown anyone and redressing them. Feedback on art is an extremely difficult path because many argue that creativity is suffocated with the rules and regulations and a very good friend told me that if Emily Dickinson had stuck to rules, she would have never been, or that we would have never experienced the romantic era. I can now boldly say this is untrue because further reading brings me to another great quote (do the quotes make me seem academic or just a lazy show off). Anyway, that Poets will sometimes comment that they do not want to be bothered with all that stuff about material and assonance and craft, because it doesn’t come naturally...But once one’s craft becomes second nature, it is not an infringement on one’s natural gift ..if anything, it is an enlargement of them....(William Packard, 1988: 372).
Like I said, getting people to agree on what poetry is and what it should do is like trying to split a mustard seed. So, World Poetry Day is on 21st March. I will certainly read the Monitor newspaper for selfish reasons and finish off The Trial of Dedan Kimathi which I should have but there is this darned series called Criminal Minds and for this week, it has controlled my creative space and I blame it for making me sound like a loony bin. I just love good acting.
For what it’s worth, enjoy World Poetry Day and for poets and lovers of poetry, let the language of poetry take you places you will never forget.

Women’s Day Was Galooooorious

Some of the fashion at the Emin Pasha Women's Day festival.(Photo by Kiya)


Women’s Day was galooooorious. And yes, we do need the world over to be conscious of this day, this event, this moment, this transition, because women are artistes, they create, they give birth to and they are here to stay. I started off at Watoto North church and, under the royal theme of purple, the place was decked with beauts with tales to tell, merchandise to sell, authors with life changing stories, and it was so kool. Little Serukenya (Ken’s sis) led these songs which made us shake our kiwatos and remind ourselves of why we are African because we can daaaance. Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul should come to Watoto North first for pre-auditions. Then there was free breast cancer screening as well-every damsel should run for any opportunity to check their breasts. It is the age of information and education and we can save ourselves a lot of raging within.
After that, was the female artistes bash at Emin Pasha and what an extravaganza. Alliance Française stepped it up and had a string of fantabulous artistes one after the other at the resplendent Emin Pasha. There was Keko, a 20 something Jap and hip hop artiste who can make the furniture dance to her raps. Feminine and fierce and artistic and real, she is the embodiment of musical growth in Uganda. Of course, the sensations like Lillian Mbabazi, Tamba, Elaine Alowo and Ife made the day memorable. The power of words and sound was combined with so much charisma and Ife, Grace and Ann led us along this powerful story making the words win us all. I have never enjoyed the cliché’s of women’s day and was so glad that this was far from it. The fashion show lone with beads, bark cloth, accessorised into fashion fiesta was incredible. You should have been there.
Thanks everyone for making it happen.