Tag: poem

  • we of the humus (on grief)

    we of the humus (on grief)

    What is the relationship between grief and honesty, grief and truth? I see grief as a braided rope with strands of anger, sadness, fear, disgust, all those most knotted of reactions to what we have lost, in a word, to our pain. Is grief truth because it names our most…

  • on development (reclaiming naming worlds)

    on development (reclaiming naming worlds)

    Development is a word and a world, A word from a certain kind of world Building. In an ecosystem of other words (progress, growth, sustainable development, adjustment, reforms, good governance, democracy) That makes a certain kind of world, Built for certain kinds of people Possible. What world? A world of…

  • are we talking about what we are talking about?

    We are on our way to Wales for the final section of the GESA programme (written in August 2018*). I was in two minds about coming for this last part of the programme and strongly considered going back to London. Here’s why. Bird, Why are you stuck in the tree…

  • brick by brick

    When I see the houses in different states of completeness: exposed brick, half-painted brick, putting up the first floor, It reminds me that life is process, and we’re constantly making it, like these houses, what we want, from wherever we begin.

  • where are those songs?

    ‘Where are those songs’ is a poem by Micere Githae Mugo (1972) that I like and find inspirational especially in light of a quest for memory and recovery of once remembered things. It starts off a bit despondent, the narrator is seeking songs and memories only to find them lost-…

  • on poetry, and agosín’s ‘i lived on butterfly hill’

    on poetry, and agosín’s ‘i lived on butterfly hill’

    “Poetry is a violence from within that protects us from a violence without” Wallace Stevens One evening many years ago, I stood up in a modestly filled room at the Goethe Institut, Nairobi, walked somewhat unsurely to a seat at the front and read some poems from my ‘Pink book’…

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