If we don’t read, respond to our writers, who will?

I am thinking of poetry because of the impending inauguration of the 45th Potus (President of the US) next week. As you probably know, several American Presidents have invited eminent poets to read a poem at their inaugurations. The most memorable for me was Maya Angelou’s recitation of “On the Pulse of Morning” at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.

But there have been several other powerful performances, including the “Gift Outright” by Robert Frost at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy. You would probably remember Robert Frost as the endearing “plain-talking” American versifier who penned the unforgettable reflection on our choices in life: “The Road Not Taken”.

I do not know if any poet will be invited to perform at the inauguration next week. But that did not stop me wondering what I would have recited if I, as a “prominent” poet and a father and grandfather of several American citizens, had been invited to grace the occasion.

Rather absurdly, the only metered piece that came to mind from my recent scribblings was the jocular ICT rap “Twitting a Tweet”, which I did for my sister Akoth Nyakajulu, not a twit by any definition. In our cheating form, it goes like: “A twit on twitter ought to twit. But that would not be sweet. You rather would post a tweet.”

TARMAC POET

That certainly would not be appropriate for the occasion! In any case, only “Blue” (Democratic Party) Presidents have so far invited poets to perform at their inaugurations, possibly an indication of what the “other side” thinks of poetry. Since next Friday’s inauguration is of that side, maybe you and I need not bother much about matters poetic for the occasion.

That said, however, the question remains whether poets and other artists should be engaged, publicly, in matters patently politic. My teacher and friend David Rubadiri, the Grand Doyen of African verse, often expresses his aversion to what he calls “airport tarmac” performers.

This refers specifically to those troupes of singers and dancers routinely carted to airports to entertain African leaders every time they were boarding or embarking from a plane. I speak of them in the past tense because they are becoming increasingly rare these days. But I have no objection to the appearance and participation of artists in state functions.

The challenge is what form the artistic contribution to these and other national endeavours should take. Obviously, the days of the sycophantic praise-singing artist are or should be long dead and gone, especially in the environment of pluralism.

While trying to avoid narrow prescriptions, we propose that a worthwhile artistic work should be expected to honestly reflect its society. It should faithfully mirror and assess its beliefs, its hopes and aspirations, its concerns and challenges, its fears and failures, and its achievements.

This takes us back to the ideology of “commitment”, one of the staples on which our new teachers, especially those of the Leeds School, like Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Grant Kamenju and Pio Zirimu, brought us up. (You can see how lucky I was, sitting at the feet of all three of these, in Dar es Salaam, Nairobi and Makerere). 

Our teachers were following in the footsteps of the masters of the age, like Jean-Paul Sartre, the most lucid exponent of what he called “littérature engagée” (committed literature) or simply, “engagement” (French for “commitment”,  not engagement of the marrying kind). They also borrowed leaves from their immediate mentors in Leeds, like the late Arnold Kettle, who also taught me briefly in Dar es Salaam, to impress on us the conviction that literature or “art for its own sake” had no room in a revolutionising society like ours.

I appreciated commitment, and it made more sense to me than the Marxist and Maoist disquisitions, which, as I have said before, left me rather sceptical. But my demand of commitment was that it should not be a one-way street.

I agree that the artist and the writer should be committed to his or her society in the sense of reflecting its concerns as pointed out above. Writers should also be totally committed to their work, toiling at it unrelentingly and not taking it as a pastime or an affectation.

LACK OF COMMITMENT

But equally, I insist that the society should be committed to its writers. It should actively support them by enabling them to live and work and also by intelligently reading what they write. They should not accept them only when they sing praises and then turn round and persecute them when they reveal and discuss unpleasant truths.

Our societies have committed these crimes of lack of commitment to our writers, like Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Ngugi wa Mirii, Micere Mugo, Abdilatif Abdalla of Sauti ya Dhiki, Alamin Mazrui of Kilio cha Haki, Byron Kawadwa of Song of the Cockerel and many others. Thiong’o, Mazrui and Abdalla were detained and forced into exile. Forced into exile, too, were Micere Mugo and Mirii, the latter dying there eventually. Byron Kawadwa was abducted and killed in Uganda.

But ignoring our writers is also a show of lack of commitment. When did you, or me, last read through a Kenyan or Ugandan novel or play, or discuss one with your colleagues, family and friends? All right, I am just about completing my reading of John Habwe’s Pendo la Karaha. But then, I am in the business full time, although I confess I mostly read for pleasure and curiosity. But if we do not read and respond to our writers, who will? What will give them the encouragement to keep writing?

Inviting artists and poets to perform at state functions is a gesture of our commitment to what they are doing in and for society. We should practise this commitment by respecting, supporting and consuming their creative endeavours.

I might still be invited to perform at a presidential inauguration, maybe later this year. But I will only accept the invitation if I am assured that our society is seriously committed to its writers.