Reclaiming Home: Chottohanga Aketch's The Sun on a Coloured Portrait

It is not easy to place Chottohanga Aketch’s collection of poems The Sun on a Coloured Portrait in any one of Kenya’s generation of poets.

Aketch, who describes himself as ‘a country child born and raised in Ugenya, Siaya County comes off as a poet in his own unique voice, with influences perhaps from the European tradition but steeped in the oral tradition of the Luo. This makes for lengthy lyrical poems with images drawn from his own environment.

One can immediately feel the connection Aketch has with his motherland and country roots in the opening poem: ‘Sega wa’ which loosely translates as ‘Our Sega’. In it, Aketch paints an Edenic picture of his birthplace, extolling its virtues and decrying the changes it has experienced.

This twelve-part poem, stretching across ten pages leaves nothing of the persona’s memories. The sense of community, the landmarks hard done by time, the girls once loved and now gone or whose beauty now reduced by HIV and AIDS because of recklessness and, the legends of Sega each get a mention.

One feels the writer is trying to reclaim home. But what is home if not the place where your hopes and dreams are realised and sometimes dashed too? Also, there’s a sense of nostalgia, a feeling that the Sega of today is different.

Idea of identity

That Aketch starts at home does not mean he stays there. He casts his poetic vision further, dealing with such serious matters as the malfeasance of the ruling class and the apparent helplessness of the masses.

In ‘Portraits You Can’t Sell’ the writer takes issue with land grabbers, ‘The Owners of State, King-Makers, Bosses of State’ who ‘loot dry proceeds from the stressed economy’. You’d expect that with this observant eye, the writer will provide a solution, an alternative, but the reader is left to figure out what to do, much like watching or listening to a news broadcast.

There’s also the personal, poems in which the writer grasps with the idea of identity, individual and multiple. What makes a man? His origin, the lottery of his birth? Ethnicity? Poems like ‘My Heart Lies’ and ‘My Own White Elephant’ deal with such issues.

What is a poetry collection without the delicate matter of love? For the lovelorn souls and hopeless romantics, there is a diversity of servings. To write about a poet’s work and not talk about his style is to do a disservice. The poems are heavily reliant on the Luo oral tradition. The result is that some are very lengthy, making for laborious reading and sometimes a repetition of ideas.

It is difficult to place exactly which writers Aketch’s work is in conversation with. Even though his is a strong and unique voice that can claim its place in the present literary space.

This leads to the question: What poetic traditions does a Kenyan poet writing today draw from? Do they draw from the first generation Kenyan poets such as Jared Angira, Jonathan Kariara and Everrett Standa, anthologised in the definitive poetry book Poems from East Africa by D Cook and D Rubadiri?

An author who chooses these early poets as a model must contend with their style, invariably drawn from the European tradition even though infused with the urgent concerns about tradition and modernity, colonialism and enriched by the oral traditions.

Keener editor

The Kenyan poet writing today might also draw from the latest generation of poets unshackled by thematic concerns early generation poets had to deal with. Poets such as Tony Mochama, Clifton Gachagua, Ngwatilo Mawiyoo, Phyllis Muthoni, Michelle Angwenyi, to name but a few exhibit such inventiveness with the language and freedom to write about the quotidian, distilling experiences with wit and clarity. It appears Aketch has choosen his own path. The question of language is a weighty one, the politics of which will not cease any time soon, especially for the writer in Africa.

Aketch’s poems use Dholuo words which are italicised in text and then glossed at the end each poem. One wonders why this is done. To whom are the words foreign? Are the poems intended for a perceived ‘other’ audience? As an editor, I encourage writers to own the language. No italics, no glossary. In an African, and for that matter, Kenyan context, it is English that is foreign.

For all the beauty of the poems, the poignancy of the subjects and his unique use of the language, Aketch’s The Sun on a Coloured Portrait would have done better with a keener editor and a better production quality.

That said, this collection is accessible, easy to the ear and worth anyone’s time.