Poetry stronger than guns in changing the world - Kiguli

It was inspired by a true story of a minister’s son who was bedridden at Mulago Hospital and the many news reports wondering why he was being abandoned.

Kiguli pounced to ask why we should fuss about the minister’s son yet we care less when the ordinary folk bear the brunt of a negligent health system. Sadly the questions she asked in the 90s are still begging for answers.

Through poetry, Kiguli wants to trigger our minds for logical solutions to the challenges of our society—without wielding swords, yelling at one another, pulling the trigger or unleashing toxic canisters.

 For castigating war, injustices and marginalisation of all sorts—with the consistency of a bird knitting a nest—Kiguli has crept onto the table of global literary giants, performing in Cologne, Milan, Tehran, Washington, Kentucky, etc. Her latest symbol of excellence is the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2023 International Civil Poetry Festival in Vercelli, Italy.

Her mentors

Kiguli, an associate professor of literature at Makerere University, dedicated Weeping Lands, her latest collection, to Rhoda Nsibambi, Dr Kasalina Matovu, Prof. Rose Mbowa and her mother, for their direct impact on her formation.

Yet her list of influencers is endless. Prof. Abasi Kiyimba deliberately mentored her since she joined Makerere and connected her to the University of Strathclyde (UK) for her Masters of Letters in Literary Linguistics.

Prof. Timothy Wangusa’s elegance instantly attracted her to Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino, in her first year.

 She is proud to have sat in the space Mwalimu Nyerere once sat; to have been taught by David Rubadiri, the Malawian ranked among Africa’s best poets after independence. Prof. Okello Ogwang, at the literature department, Prof. Dominica Dipio, Jane Frances Alowo, Austin Bukenya, among others, shaped her.

 It is all about Makerere, she said. In 1962, seven years before Kiguli was born, Makerere hosted the Conference of African Writers of English Expression—the first major international gathering of writers and critics of African literature on the African continent; moreover at the cusp of independence for most African countries.

Rubadiri, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Christopher Okigbo, Frances Ademola, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Dennis Brutus, Robert Serumaga, Rajat Neogy, Okot p’Bitek, Rebecca Njau, and Langston Hughes, the African American, among other luminaries, discussed important topics like: What is African literature?

The conference is credited as “an enormously important moment in the history of modern African literature,” for creating a mass of writing that fed youngsters like Kiguli.

Enter Femrite

Rose Mbowa and Elvania Namukwaya Zirimu already had works published by the 1980s. But Mary Karooro Okurut, who lectured at Makerere’s Literature Department from 1981 to 1993, felt there were not enough women writers.

And even without funding, she formed Uganda Women Writers Association (Femrite) to help more women write.

Kiguli equally credits Goretti Kyomuhendo, Violet Barungi and Hilda Twongyeirwe, who shared Karooro’s vision.

“Femrite was very influential in my career,” Kiguli, who later chaired the association, said. “Otherwise, I don’t know whether my first book would have been published.”

Kiguli’s The African Saga, the first poetry collection published by Femrite, won the National Book Trust of Uganda Poetry Award in 1999. Barungi, Monica Arach, Jackee Batanda, Doreen Baingana, Glaydah Namukasa, Jocelyn Ekochu, Beatrice Lamwaka, Waltraud Ndagijimana, and Karooro herself among other Femrite members, followed with national, continental or international awards or nominations.

Kiguli would become judge for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and a member of the advisory board for the African Writers Trust, which brings together Africa writers in the Diaspora and those on the continent to share skills and resources. The Trust was formed by Kyomuhendo, Femrite’s first programmes coordinator.

Couldn’t believe it

Italian journalist Antonella Sinopoli introduced Kiguli to the International Civil Poetry fraternity five years ago.

Since 2017 Sinopoli has travelled to Ghana, Togo, Ivory Coast and Tanzania, profiling women poets through her AfroWomenProject, which aims “to showcase Sub-Saharan African women’s poetry to give women a chance to express their own stories, tragedies and hopes.”

Sinopoli met Kiguli in Kampala in 2018, among 12 Ugandan women poets, sampling 36 poems. In October, Kiguli was invited as guest of honour at the 2023 International Civil Poetry Festival in Vercelli, Italy, where she received the prestigiuos  Lifetime Achievement Award.

Swedish Jesper Svenbro, Polish Adam Zagajewski, British Tony Harrison, Syrian Adonis, Russian Evgenij Evtushenko, American poet-biologist Katherine Larson, Brazilian Márcia Theóphilo, Italian Luciano Erba, Polish Ryszard Krynicki, Ukrainian Aleksandr Kabanov, won it before. But to Kiguli, being the first African in this noble club is still flattering.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said, with a shy smile. “I felt someone else deserved it. I could think of very many poets who deserved this more than I did.”

October 25, Kiguli visited the Catholic University of Milan, as rehearsal for the award night. Beatrice Nicolini, a professor of African history at the University of Milan, briefly profiled Kiguli and Makerere University before  Prof. Roberto Cicala’s students deeply engaged her on why she chose civil poetry, and topics like war, marginalisation of women, etc.

 “I think Europe has a lot to offer likewise Africa. It’s just that Africa has had a lot to cope with in terms of history. Slavery, colonialism, the history of our leaders becoming the colonialists after the colonialist left,” Kiguli said in one of the interviews with major newspapers and televisions in Milan. She faulted the World Bank’s tendency of forcing policies under Africa’s throats. “I think it can be better for continents to study each other to see where we can have intersections, to see whether Africa needs policies from Europe or we need to study each other to see what works best in Africa.”

From Milan, Kiguli walked into a fully-packed Vercelli Seminary. Carla Pomaré of the University of Eastern Piedmont,  profiled Makerere University and Kiguli, as a master of oral and written African poetry, popular song and performance theory, in a powerful, accurate 25-minute presentation, as Sinopoli translated.
Pomaré explained why civil poetry is important; why all voices across the world are necessary; why they had chosen Kiguli for the award.

Then Andrea Corsaro, Mayor of Vercelli, presented her with the award.

“I don’t know what I was thinking at that moment. I don’t have words to explain it,” she told us.

After reading her acceptance speech and select poems from Weeping Lands, Kiguli got a standing ovation.  “The whole gathering got up, clapping. My God! I felt so humbled. The whole thing was bigger than me.”

The following morning Kiguli engaged  students at two high schools, who were so eager about her literature. They had read about Makerere, Uganda and Africa. “I thought these teenagers would be busy on their phones but all were eager, asking pertinent questions.”

Susan learns to read

Reading is a culture Kiguli grew up with. Her aunt introduced her to Psalms and Kiguli loved the rhythm of the scriptures.

At Kabowa Primary School, she found Luganda books like Nakku Alima very fascinating. And even if she did not study her mother tongue further, she later trained herself poems in Luganda.

Her love for words grew at Naalinnya Lwantale Primary School, but Gayaza High School took it to another level. Every Saturday, Ann Cutler, invited her Senior One class to borrow books from her home library. Kiguli preferred Lucy Montgomery’s series Anne of Green Gables, Anne of the Island, and Catherine Marshall’s A Man Called Peter.

“I was fascinated that I didn’t have to travel to England to know what happened there.”

Gayaza also shaped her behaviour. “We did all the cleaning ourselves and lots of community work,” Kiguli said, adding that the school also emphasised the values of believing in excellence and integrity.

 Mothers, heroines

“I miss that gentle woman/

And her lovely soft laughter

And that voice as if laughter is velvet/

In her mouth,” Kiguli writes in I Miss Mum, one of the many poems praising her mother.

Joyce Nabaliisa Kiguli, a former community development officer, believed in improving communities around her. “Mom was very kind, loving, hardworking and very strict,” Susan said. 

Widowed at 27 years, Maama Joy, as Susan calls her in a Luganda poem, never remarried. She devoted herself to raising her seven children into academics, medics, bankers, researchers, managers, and with great humility—as their late father George William Kiguli wished.

Because she believed in networks and lifting others, she fostered many other children. Her charisma attracted people like bright night lights attract moths. Yet lights fade with the rising sun. But Maama Kiguli, as many fondly knew her, shined for decades, day and night. Never dimmed by war or poverty. Touched countless lives, until her mission was done in 2012.

A proud Anglican, she appealed to Catholics, Muslims, Adventists, etc. A rare breed.

Kiguli, the poet, does not hide her bias for women. “Did you start a war/So our women/Could be sold to public shame?” she asked in To War Mongers Everywhere. 

She hails African women as heroines for rising above patriarchy. Like those single mothers who earn peanuts as janitors but give their children university education.

She calls women “the glue that binds community, especially in Africa.”

Passion, excellence

In Nostalgia Of An Old Woman, her tribute to Muhammad Ali, then her celebration of Stephen Kiprotich’s 2012 historic Olympic gold and Joshua Cheptegei’s conquests, Kiguli writes like a seasoned sports journalist. Yet she does not pen such pieces to flaunt her versatility or to praise celebrity.

Rather,  she wants to highlight the stories behind success. The sacrifice. The dedication. The inspiration, especially, to the young generation, the kind one draws from Kiguli’s story—a child raised in war-ravaged Luweero and became a globetrotting  professor.

To her, poetry is a passion. A struggle to amplify the meek voices; changing imbalances by thinking, without kicking each other. Kiguli wants her students to feel the worth of engaging with human beings. And where possible, build bridges instead of burning them.

“She is so passionate about poetry; and she is an excellent teacher,” Amina Nakaayi, her former student told me.

“During school practice, most teachers and students avoided poetry but after being taught by Susan, I taught poetry with a passion. Actually, for the 10 years I taught literature in high school, poetry is the only paper I taught. Susan was so practical and made poetry simple.”

Nakaayi later did her Masters in Linguistics and although she is not a poet, she said, poetry is crucial in her work and life.

Unending game

 At the awards night in Vercelli, Kiguli recited Weeping Lands, I Miss Mum, Survive and Win, To War Mongers Everywhere, Haunting Hands, Love Is Not A Rose, and Foreign Language, the organisers’ selection.

Yet to any Ugandan, one poem is more relatable. “We are at it again,” she starts, profiling the violence on citizens by men in uniform, whose role is to protect us.

“No one deserves news/That a rock full of hatred hit her husband/That he writhed in blood/As television cameras rolled.”

“No one deserves to receive news of/

The death of a father/

By watching uniformed men/Club his head/

Until he crumbles in an/

Incoherent heap/While television cameras run.”

“No one deserves to see/Bullets lodged/

In the womb of their/Pregnant daughter/Her clothes shredded/

By the power of violence and silence of terror”

“No one deserves to travel long distances/

To fetch the body of a child/

Sent to university in hope of glory/

Because a bullet was lodged in/

His head by a security guard/

Who has lost the sense of foolish daring youth.”

By emphasising the presence of television cameras, amid this madness, Kiguli is exposing shameless impunity and our habitual pretense about justice.

“No one deserves this deliberate extravaganza/Of robbing life/Knowing it will be news for a day/Then another folly will take over…”  It is The Unending Game.

Impact

Kiguli’s 160 poems collected in: The African Saga, Home Floats In A Distance and Weeping Lands and many others spread in journals in India and anthologies elsewhere are translated in German, Italian, Portuguese and French. 

Award-winning South African author Alex Smith, called Kiguli “the leading intellectually astute voice in contemporary East African poetry.”

Kiguli refutes perceptions that poetry appeals to limited audiences, hence creates little impact. She says poetry should be a conversation, in beautiful and simple language that can be performed at weddings, funerals, etc. 

Titbits

• 2005: Doctor of Philosophy in English, University of Leeds, UK
• 1996: Master of Science in Literary Linguistics for teaching English language and literature, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
• 1994: Master of Arts in Literature, Makerere University
• 1991: Bachelor of Arts in Education, Makerere University
• In November, her book Weeping Lands received the Ali Sul Mediterraneo Libri & Cultura International Award from The Alliante Mediterraneo Association.
• Mentoring poets
• needs identifying interest, teaching them the craft of oral and written poetry.
• The poet can then  choose where to specialise, follow particular styles or modify them to create their own.
• A creative writer must read expansively.
• An open-mind is equally important because ‘‘every day you are a student.’’