On November 3rd, Ngwatilo shall be in Stockholm for the 13th Stockholm Poetry Festival 2009. I’ll perform/read alongside Wambui Mwangi (Dr.) and Shailja Patel, talk about Kenyans being fabulous across the seas! We’ll also be reading among some fabulous Swedish writers, I’ll update this info as we go along… exciting stuff!!
And what’s the theme?
An Evening [...]
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My government wants to know if I live, if I am dead.
My government wants to know what I do for a living,
how many hours I work. It counts my offspring
my livestock my radio my mobile phone. It wants to know
my tribe, the place I was born, if I own a fridge. My fridge
shall help my [...]
to plant blue gum trees because they would sell to the power
company, because it would help the environment, to plant,
even if we replaced the ones God planted – destroy them -
to make farms for profitable fashionable green things, like maize
and coffee, neglecting and forgetting the plants we grew before,
the trees that just breathed while gnarled [...]
The pothole is gone; the one I hit once
and remembered every other trip home,
knowing it was there when I passed
like a road sign. It’s been recarpeted–
by the Chinese, mum says, only they
will fix a road in a day.
I drive over the spot to celebrate and mourn,
the same way you scatter soil over a coffin
before they [...]
It’s fascinating how Kenyans responded to the news of Michael Jackson’s dramatic final exit, not on stage right or stage left but as if through a hidden trap door just off centre.
We celebrated and mourned him in earnest. In Nairobi a friend and local entertainment writer organized a communal moonwalk downtown; one of the presenters [...]
