can't wait to read

the new collection of poetry, Behind My Eyes, by one of my favourite poets, Li-Young Lee.

I carry so many of his lines with me. When I did Migritude I at the World Social Forum in Nairobi last year, the first question in the audience Q and A after the show was:

Where is home for you?

I said:

Home is wherever I can work and love.

And then I quoted Li-Young Lee's

One Heart

Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, friend, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings

was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.


~ Li-Young Lee ~

(Book of My Nights)

stopped me in my tracks today

"Were it possible for us to wait for ourselves to come into the room, not many of us would find our hearts breaking into flower as we heard the door handle turn. But we fight for our rights, we will not let anybody take our breath away from us and we resist all attempts to prevent us from using our wills."

Rebecca West

This Blog In Adam Magazine

July's issue of Adam Magazine, East Africa's first glossy for men, features my blog as a vital reference for Kenyans on national matters of truth and justice.

It urges readers to check out my Contact List For Kenyan Parliamentarians, pick up the phone and light a fire under our elected representatives.

Artist In A Time Of War

Excerpt from an interview with Arundhati Roy on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now:

Amy Goodman: I want to ask in our last 30 seconds: the role you see of the artist in a time of war?

Arundhati Roy: Well, I think the problem is that artists are not a homogenous lot of people, and some of them are as rightwing and establishment as they can get. So the role of the artist is not different from the role of any human being. You pick your side, and then you fight, you know? But in a country like India, I'm not seeing that many radical positions taken by writers or poets or artists. It's all the seduction of the market that has shut them up like a good medieval beheading never could.

Amy Goodman: And what do you think artists should do?

Arundhati Roy: Exactly what anyone else should do, which is to pick your side, take your position, and then go for it, you know?