BNPA 3RD POETRY AWARD CEREMONY TOMORROW

3 years down. This is special for me because for three years there are friends of mine, poets, organisations that have said you keep going with this, we’ve got your back. So awed. This year we had more than double of submissions and had to go outside Uganda to get reviews on the poems. The theme, Hope, generated a lot of interesting pieces. Some were downright incredible and others, let’s just say that with poetry, there will usually be one word or mark that make it better.
Tomorrow the ceremony will be at Kati Kati and the guest of honour is Hon Jouyce Mpanga. This lady was at the helm of the Gender Ministry and created the policy. You see, back in the day, Ministers actively participated in the development of the country. (ahem ahem)
I’ m looking forward to it. Susan Kerunen will perform to Okot p Bitek’s Song of Lawino, now that is a must watch. I read his poem again and as I turned each page, I was captivated by the strong use of imagery. And we still get people who do not want to learn from the best.
Beatrice Lamwaka, who was shortlisted for this year’s African Caine Prize will read from her short story, Butterfly Dreams. Sophie alal, last year’s BNPA winner will also give us a little something something. And then we will give out the awards. Thanks so much for all of you who still believe that this award must stand for something. It makes me proud. The sponsors, Stichting Doen, madandcrazyblogspot and Amakula Kampala Cultural Foundation-mwah!
And then Saturday I leave for the Grahamstown Arts festival in South Africa, looking soooooooooooooo forward, also because it will give me my much needed rest.
Bless you all.

Stormy Heart by Mildred Kiconco Barya

Stormy Heart
A heart like mine
Fickle,
But generous
I welcome him,
Them
We are us.

Shades start to peel
Revealing hwo they are
Msqueraders.
Once more,
I’ve been deceived.

There are many
Coming through my open door
My sister advises
I should have a selection method
Tight and soundproof
But that way, I tell her
I might block the real thing
Cut the oxygen to my heart
What if there’s nothing left of a heart?
I see splinters.

Another time a friend asks,
Have I any children?
‘No’.
‘I am sure there have been men.’
‘So?’
‘At your age they’ve given you no children?’
‘They’ve given me principles,’
He laughs,
I tell him there’s another thing,
Absent fathers
Missing husbands
Lone mothers
There are too many.

Now I am seated by the ocean
Wind roars,
Waves roll and rock with the shore
Turbulence swells
Just like it is
With my stormy heart.

Published in her third poetry collection, Give me room to move my feet. Amalion Publishing, 2009.

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...