Revisiting poetry: A new voice in the wilderness

By JENNIFER MUCHIRI

NAIROBI, KENYA: Many Kenyans who consider themselves book lovers will confess that most of the literature they read is in prose. Few take time to read drama, unless they are students of Literature who are required to do so for their coursework, and even fewer bother to read poetry.

Poetry has earned itself the ‘difficult’ tag such that many readers approach it with apprehension, even loathing at times. Given a choice, students would avoid all course units in poetry. Even writers are not producing as much poetry as they do prose. It is therefore refreshing to see a young Kenyan publish a collection of poetry.

Diana Rop’s Of A Thousand Voices (2012) is a collection of poems whose messages reflect the young woman’s view of her society. Her poems cover a range of issues but the greatest strength of this collection is the poet’s sustained concern with the commonplace. Her poems address issues that we encounter daily but which we seldom consider seriously.

A Lesson from Joy, for instance, challenges us to be grateful for whatever little that we have since there are others who would give anything to be in our position. In this poem, the persona is embarrassed to realise that she is sulking at an approaching storm yet a street girl’s worry is that the storm will flood the street she considers her home.

              2007/8 PEV

Diana castigates the senselessness of the 2007/2008 post-election violence in Kenya and the death, pain and loss that came with it. In a number of poems she calls for unity among Kenyans in spite of our differences.

She questions the ‘wisdom’ of people who belong to one nation coming to a point where they face each other with spears and machetes/the sight of each other’s faces/[making] us gravely sick/thirsty for each other’s blood…

Rop is constantly concerned with the fact that we have lost our humanity and a number of poems call for a restoration of the same. She paints a society that is indifferent to the problems facing the less fortunate – poverty, sorrow, despair, rape, disease, school dropouts, orphans – and regrets that our moral and social fabric is tattered.

Painting life as paradoxical, Diana mocks the affluence amid abject poverty. She portrays as vanity the idea that when many are sleeping hungry/my dogs feed on imported bacon.

In two poems which echo Henry Barlow’s Building the Nation and Marjorie Mcgoye’s  A Freedom Song, Diana questions our appreciation and treatment of makers and builders of a nation. She is sympathetic to the plight of workers who have no bargaining power in the face of ill treatment from their employers. In Makers of a Nation and  The Nation Builder, she suggests a revision of the meaning of nation builders and makers since it is the house help, bus driver, cobbler and garbage collector who really build the nation.

Her reflections on the condition and experiences of the African woman are captured in a number of poems which address issues pertinent to womanhood such as childbirth, marriage, nurturing families and household chores and the experiences of girls as they grow into womanhood.

One of the most memorable poems on motherhood is My Graveside Rose which talks of a pregnancy resulting from rape. However, she demonstrates that the pain of rape is not limited to women by writing about the rape of a boy in His Soul Is Deep.

Perhaps young women like Diana will be most encouraged by the poem The Kite My Other Name which apart from being shaped like a kite, is a call for girls to rise above the various hurdles that come their way. Diana’s poems about love offer a refreshing read in the midst of poems on pain and suffering.

      ESSENCE OF HUMANITY

Her concern with love runs through the entire collection reminding us that the essence of humanity is the ability to treat each other with love regardless of our differences.

She takes a swipe at poor governance and mourns the effects of technology, which has transformed human beings into mere numbers. As the title of this collection suggests, Of a Thousand Voices gives agency to different sections of the society by allowing them to express themselves; to have their voices heard.  Diana’s choice of characters and subjects makes the poems read like a collection of the voices of the ‘wretched of the earth.’ 

The poems address grave issues yet they are written in a simple language, which would appeal to all readers. Hers is a deep, yet thoughtful look at the contemporary society.

It is a call for the return of the humane in all of us. I recommend this book to all lovers of literature and especially to teachers and students of poetry in high schools and universities.

Dr Muchiri teaches Literature at the UoN. Email: jennifer.muchiri@uonbi.ac.ke