We should all do with a little more poetry

Last evening at dusk, as the sun set over the city, we launched this text book ‘Modern African Poetry’ for secondary schools with one John Mwazemba of Phoenix Publishers at Chester House.

I have spoken in this space in the recent past about how technology has made students lose the beautiful art of letter writing, replacing it with texts full of Xs that do not make too much sense.

Poetry, alongside chivalry, the thing of opening doors for ladies, pulling up chairs and pouring their wine for them are almost gone.

But if you grew up in the pre-Michuki era, standing in PSVs (buses and matatus), it means that in primary school, you pulled the chairs out from under girls as they went to sit so you could laugh.

In high school, you learned that the fat lady fighting to get into the matatu would shove, kick, bite, scratch and break your nose with her elbow just to beat you to the seat.

In campus, you got to know college girls who drank liquor like tankers, so your gentlemanly mien went out of the window. It was every man for himself, and women against us all.

How do you explain the chutzpah of the likes of Beryl Wanga up there and her lady buddies, who can interrupt ongoing dowry negotiations by wazee to tell them they want to be married ‘for free,’ yawa?

Okay, I understand how annoying those Banyamalenges and Chura Cheka committees can be, silly old men who drink busaa and changaa but now want the groom to get them champagne in the name of goats – ati see how unblemished and educated ‘our daughter’ is? These are just gangs of extortionists.

I swear when Chelsea grows up, and the hard day comes when it is time to get hitched, I’ll tell the fellow – ‘Dude, how about we cut the chit-chat and get down to brass tacks? Can you cut me a cheque of say,’ (here I will roll my eyes to the sky and pretend to think) then say casually, ‘a million?’

But in this fast-moving world, it is still important for our young people to adopt the language of poetry, just as a pleasurable form to read (and not just for high school exams) and because a good poet can give you valuable insights into the beauty and the treachery of the human heart.

Take this poem, ‘Perspectives,’ for example, that is in our new poetry book.

‘She who lights neon in my heart called to say she couldn’t quite find the location of my place,

Because my building moves by night.

Perspective – it is for the same reason she does not see my face

in morning light.’

A young man in high school or even college who texts a young woman who does not reply to his messages, and stands him up today for the date he had been looking forward to all of April, will immediately understand that even if he had told her he is standing outside the 20th Century Plaza (waiting to take her for an IMAX movie), she would have apologised later saying, “the building moved from Mama Ngina street, that’s why we did not meet.”

In short, he will understand she does not feel him (‘see his face, even in morning light’) and cut his losses. Unless he is either daft or a psycho, in which case he’ll threaten to jump off the top of KICC if she does not date him.

In such a scenario, let the fellow jump. He will get a whole new perspective on life as he hurtles down, and become more grounded and ‘down to earth.’

[email protected]