Internationale Poetry-Biennale - Filmfestival - Salon - Netzwerk
- ARTISTS
whiteBOX München / Munich
- Behnaz Amani (IR)
- Patricia Brooks (AT)
- Katja Brunner (CH)
- Gianna Olinda Cadonau (CH)
- Ofelia H. de la Cuba (PE/D)
- Susanne Darabas (RO/D)
- Magda Drozd (CH)
- Karin Fellner (D)
- Heike Fiedler (CH)
- Andrea Fontán (AR)
- Limpe Fuchs (D)
- Stella Glitter (CH)
- Ariane von Graffenried (CH)
- Sabine Groschup (AT)
- Sabine Gruber (AT/IT)
- Madara Gruntmane (LV)
- Geraldine Gutiérrez-Wienken (VE/D)
- Gerlinde Hacker (AT)
- Nazli Karabiyikoglu (TR)
- Birgit Kempker (CH)
- Victoria Kennefick (IE)
- Barbara Korun (SI)
- Augusta Laar (D)
- Daniela La Luz (D)
- Swantje Lichtenstein (D)
- Vera Linder (IT)
- Jannah Loontjens
- Barbi Marcovic (AT)
- Anais Meier (CH)
- Verena Mermer (AT)
- Nora Nadjarian (AM)
- Stella Nyanci (UG)
- Monika Olzak (D)
- Hannah Oppolzer (AT)
- Lynn Parkerson (USA)
- Radmila Petrovic (RS)
- Doro Pointner (AT)
- Phyu Nu Sabal (MM)
- Theresa Seraphin (D)
- Lilit Stepanyan (AM)
- Eva Surma (AT)
- Julia Toggenburger (CH)
- Arpi Voskanyan (AM)
- Anne Waldman (USA)
- Christine Yohannes (ET)
- Barbara Yurtdas (D)
- Nora Zapf (D)
- Literaturhaus Wien / Vienna
- Alexandra Bernhardt (D/AT)
- Martina Claussen
- Andrea Grill (AT)
- Augusta Laar
- Lorena Pircher (IT/AT)
Stella Nyanzi
⇒ Focus PEN Writers in Exile
Stella Nyanzi wird am Sonntag zusammen mit ⇒ Christine Yohannes
beim
⇒ Creative Europe-Symposium EPESEP über die Situation in Afrika berichten.
Stella Nyanzi is a poet from Uganda who frequently utilised her poetry to criticise the failings, violations and excesses of president Yoweri Museveni’s corrupt, brutal and authoritarian military regime of almost forty years. She was imprisoned twice in maximum-security prison for her poetic writings which offended this president, his wife and family.
While sentenced to eighteen months in Luzira Women’s Prison because of a poem she wrote to commemorate the president’s birthday in 2018, she wrote many poems which were often confiscated and destroyed by prison wardresses. However, she was able to smuggle some poems out of prison, which were published during her imprisonment - under the title of No Roses from My Mouth: Poems from Prison, 2020.
Recent poetry collections are Don’t Come in My Mouth: Poems that Rattled Uganda, 2021, Eulogies of My Mouth: Poems for A Poisoned Uganda, 2022 and Exiled for My Mouth: Poems from Across Borders, 2024.
Stella Nyanzi lives in Bavaria with her three teenage children. She is also a trained medical anthropologist, actively engaged in social justice activism for women and LGBTIQA+ people in exile and back home, and a Ugandan dissident politician belonging to the opposition political party called „Forum for Democratic Change“.
Writing is a tool and weapon that Nyanzi deploys in her non-violent resistance against diverse oppressions in our world today.
I’m Just a Woman Aching for Peace
1) Marching feminist protesters have sung
“Bread and Roses” throughout history.
I want to sing about some bread for
Black, brown and white children whose
Mothers’ kitchens are bombed.
The baking tins and spoons sit
Under rubble mixed with shrapnel.
Meagre food supplies in the darkened kitchens
Are buried in homes demolished by soldiers’ bombs.
I want to sing for some bread for
Black, brown and white children whose
Mothers sing them songs for supper,
As big bombs blast through the mealtime.
Why do men in power-suits pay soldiers
To bomb the kitchens that bake bread for children?
Why do men in power-suits forbid me from
Singing in street protests against the bombing of bread
In baking tins in darkened kitchens of mothers in war?
I’m just a woman aching for peace!
2) Civil rights activists have sung
“We shall overcome some day” throughout history.
I want to sing about overcoming today.
Not some distant day, but today.
Overcoming war today.
Overcoming apartheid today.
Overcoming genocide today.
Overcoming holocaust today.
Overcoming ethnic cleansing today.
Overcoming bombs today.
Overcoming military violence today.
Why do men in power-suits still pay soldiers
To bomb our world today?
Why do men in power-suits ban me
From protesting against war today?
I’m just a woman aching for peace.
3) Black African dissidents have cried
“Amandla!”
And the oppressed masses replied
“Ngawethu!” throughout history.
Indeed, Amandla, the power is ours
The people – ngawethu.
The people have power for peace!
The people have power over war!
The people yearn for peace!
The people will have peace.
I’m just a woman aching for peace.
from: Exiled for My Mouth: Poems from Across Borders, Kampala, Kisana Publishers 2024
The Crested Crane Cranes Her Neck
The Crested Crane cranes her neck.
She stands perfectly still.
She peers into Uganda’s distant future.
Past the looming bloodshed still unseen.
Past AI generated military tactics.
Past tomorrow’s brutal butcher of innocent protesters.
Past the rotten overflowing bloodbaths.
The Crested Crane cranes her neck.
She zooms her vision outward to what will come.
Past the untended backyard gardens
Overgrown with over-ripe fruits, vegetables and cereals
Interspersed with mature succulent weeds.
Past looted houses with strong wooden doors gaping ajar
And shattered windows with splintered expensive glass.
The Crested Crane bows her craned neck.
Bowed heavy with the coming wastage and wasteland.
She sends her vision prophetically in search of healing.
Past orphaned teenagers in crowded shelters.
Their maimed mothers long buried in mass graves.
Their disappeared fathers, a routine distant ache.
Their bombed homes will be squatting busy factories.
Past thick oil pipes and gigantic oil drums planted firmly
On lands once holding sacred family burial grounds
Where ancestors were once honored with song, food and brew.
The Crested Crane envisions the start of the coming end.
Her well-trained eyes read the future as history in libraries.
Past footnotes bearing today’s old dictator’s names.
Past the old dictator’s handcuffed imprisoned bones.
Past the old dictator’s unmarked grave in a cemetery in exile.
Past names of the old dictator’s victors painted as street names.
The Crested Crane flies off with hope, to a watering hole.
Teach the Nation Poetry
Teach the nation poetry.
Deployments of anti-riot police
Cannot shoot tear-gas at rhymes
Nor disperse the rhythm of our poems.
Teach the nation poetry.
Forgotten masses will pack our pain in stanzas
That will pierce the core of the tyranny.
Raw poems hit harder than your platitudes.
Teach the nation poetry.
Handcuffs cannot contain the potency of poems.
Arrest warrants cannot disappear memorized verse.
Poetry can never be detained in gaol.
Teach the nation poetry.
Investigating detectives and crime solvers
Cannot decipher metaphors, similes or symbols.
Their charge sheets will never make sense.
Teach the nation poetry.
To write, recite and interpret it.
Poems of the oppressed will oppress the oppressor.
Poems will transport us to freedom.
from: No Roses from My Mouth: Poems from Prison, Kampala: Ubuntu Reading Group 2020