Nairobi restaurants craze for live poetry sessions.

 
Unlike a few years ago when people shied away from poetry , many young Kenyan now wants to step on to the stage read a few lines.

There is a poetry craze that is currently sweeping through city restaurants as the hospitality facilities juggle with different options to attract more customers.

The whirlwind started blowing at the Club Soundd in Nairobi with the monthly Kwani? Trust Open mic sessions. With a hurricane of literary debates that the Kwani? brand elicited when it appeared on the scene, poetry sessions organized by the trust gained popularity and many fans jumped into the bandwagon.

It's the first Tuesday of the month and we are seated inside a crowded Club Soundd with lots of anticipation. Though it's a typical Nairobi restaurant, Club Soundd is decorated with some variations that suggest the restaurant's inclination to art: A semi-nude painting hangs on a corner while another stares at us a few metres from where we sit.

There are exciting performances in the house, which explains the usher as patrons dig into their pockets for the entry fee. When the bell rings, we board a poetry bus ready to travel into the lofty world of poetry. There is a breeze of acoustic music and some rebellious rap music to accompany the artists in the creative process.

At first, the Kwani? poetry sessions were dismissed as an exclusive affair, but not any more. Gradually, they have managed to attract the attention of art lovers.

This trend has seen more city restaurants add poetry sessions onto their menus; the same way as the Salsa, ladies' and karaoke nights.

Wasanii Restaurant based at the Kenya National Theatre has introduced weekly poetry performances while an Ethiopian restaurant in Hurlingham has been offering the poetry thrill since mid last year.

Away from the city centre, the Cockpit Restaurant in Lang'ata opened its floor to poets and poetry lovers recently.

The troubadours-poets who move from one place to another performing their works- in these venues are mostly the same names. That also goes for the style of presentation and character of most of the works presented.

But on a disappointing note, the standards of most pieces performed are simply repeated pieces of clichés that cannot conjure any imagination; pieces that are hurriedly crafted.

"The vocals of the common man/Are voiceless/for if you raise your voice/you will be silenced by the bullets/Like a shooting locomotive/From Moscow to Kiev/Your head shall be blown away..." writes grandmaster Masese.

These are some of the lines of a "poem" titled Silenced Voices. Clearly, they are ordinary lines that you could find in a speech, a sermon or even lecture notes. His other lines go: "It isn't pleasing/To mention Anglo-Leasing/Like mention fishing/Snake rattling/Media gagging/Mind boggling/Economy sapping/Silencing the common man's voice..."

"What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves."

These words by W. H. Auden echo in my mind after listening through several pieces of the poetry recited at the Kwani? Open mic sessions.

In my understanding, poetry is so disciplined that it is able to present complex issues in a simple way.

Through its rhythm of words and their ability to tackle old topics with fresh approach, poetry should be able to startle and keep one's senses awake.

In the traditional African setting, oral poetry was recited on special occasions by people whose works were highly regarded as pieces of wisdom for posterity.

When colonial education was introduced, the tradition was pushed aside and replaced by cryptic European poetry. Whether Shakespearean or Shelly's, the pieces followed a rigid style that only communicated to those who were well schooled in it.

This cut the image of poetry as exclusive niche. Later in the day, when African scholars finally found space in the academia, the idea of mainstreaming African oral poetry became a movement.

Among the poets who led the struggle to free verse were

Okot P' Bitek with his poetry inspired by the Acholi oral traditions, Leopold Senghor, Taban Lo Liyong, David Rubadiri and even Jonathan Kariara.

But even as several gains were made in terms of popularizing poetry, the free verse movement watered down standards as everyone tried to earn the prestigious title of a poet.

"Poetry is that art of the marvellous; a simultaneous compression of language and an endless expansion of meaning." - Fred D'Aguiar.

"Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted." - Percy Shelley

"Poetry is what gets lost in translation." - Robert Frost.

"Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn." - Thomas Gray.

"The poem is a plank laid over the lion's den." - James K Baxter.

"Poetry puts the infinite within the finite." - Robert Browning.
"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognises as his own." - Salvatore Quasimodo

"In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love at all." - Wallace Stevens.

"Poetry is the music of the soul." - Voltaire.

"Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge." - William Wordsworth

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things." - T.S. Eliot

"The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing." - Samuel Johnson.