An Unfinished Review: The Nabisunsa Girls’ School Poetry Show 2014

‘Poetry is for the soul that recognizes its emotional self – shying not away from truth ...’

‘While death, to life an end imputes; poetry is a match igniting flame ...’ – Solomon Manzi

It has been nearly two months since I began toying with the significance of the quote-couple curtain-raising this opinion; the pair having crept into my day-dreaming mind one shimmering afternoon, early this March.

The wait’s longevity, as it turned out, didn’t fortunately extend further than my already feeble patience could bear.

And indeed, from no source more impressive, more fitting or more favorably instrumental to the future of poetry in this land of bananas and millet brew, could this significance have arisen.

Last week, falling on the 12^th and 13^th days of May, 2014; the Poetry sorority at Nabisunsa Girls’ School, better known to their legion of fans and friends simply as ‘The Rhymers’,  baptized mammoth audiences at the National Theatre in Kampala with poetic fire and brimstone!

Courtesy of a very creatively aggressive and implacable publicity campaign, both in and away from the cyberspace, I eventually found myself elbowing and shoving a very sweaty; very breathless way through the crowds that clogged the theater entrance on Day 1 of the show – all clamoring desperately to secure a slot in the auditorium.

Anyhow, several bruises, four sore ribs and a drenched shirt later, I was ensconced in my seat, awaiting the rise of the magenta stage curtains, and corollary, a revelation of what I had no doubt would be a prelude to the biblical heavenly glory all men of faith await.

And sure enough, whetting the tips of our already drooling appetites, the first of the night’s cast skipped onto stage, as briskly as deer in youth’s prime, and set our verse-wrought ship on its unpredictably exciting course.

What was introduced by the evening’s MCs as the first segment set a very strong stage for the rest of the poetry, with the performers delivering tough, impassioned and in every sense, iconoclastic pieces.

- Unfinished on account of extenuating circumstances -