What do you do when your essence is placed in garish linoleums, your body redesigned a footnote, & in a nation you are a powdery mildew in a stockpile of sunflowers?
Answer: you write poetry. You take your displacement, marginalization and brokenness and turn them into something as soft as indie music. At least that is what Frank Njugi — Kenyan writer, poet and culture journalist — does in his debut poetry chapbook: Ujana. A superb collection of expressive verses that showcase the brilliance of Njugi’s mind, Ujana is less of a chapbook and more of a map into the mind of a poet, a city, and a poet in a city.
Ujana was published by Inkspired on November 13th 2024 and is divided into three sections: “Kingiacho mjini si haramu”, ” Ukimpenda mtu, akakushukuru kutoka katika sakafu ya moyo wake, hata ukifa utaendelea kuishi.” , and “Utenzi wa ujana…” In each section, Njugi goes deep, exploring what it means to be a black man, to be vulnerable, to exist in a country and a city that often treats its citizens like an afterthought, and just to be.
There is something to be said about a black man who might make himself a bioethicist & clone…
Begins “Bohemian”, the first poem in Ujana, and which was first published in Roi Faineant Literary Press. It’s a well-crafted start to a well-crafted collection, with the poem exploring the complexity of a Black man’s identity, resilience, and self-perception in a world that often scrutinizes and marginalizes him.
Soon, we are ushered into the chapbook’s titular poem “Ujana”, where we find this same black man in a direct coalition with his country, with his city and with his youth. With a brilliant weaving of stanza to stanza, Njugi poignantly critiques the struggles of youth in Nairobi, a city marked by chaos, systemic inequities, and unattainable societal binaries in the poem “Ujana.”
It is this same theme that follows the next poem — “Nairobi, Nairobae, Nairoberry: The Fragmented Reality of City Skins”. Reading these two poems one after the other, one gets the sense of the brokenness in the underbelly of a system and the exploration of a boy, a man, navigating through this underbelly while at the same time navigating himself.
The chapbook follows this subtle rhythm, with one poem flowing into the next and into the next, until finally, you are left with a love letter in your hands. The letter has four addressees: the self, the city, the lover, and the family.
A most-particular poet, Njugi is most known for adorning the emotions of the personas in his poems with beautiful intricate phrases that might go over one’s head, but look in between the lines, and you find something vulnerable. Something soft. Something magical.
In the poem “Portrait of a Lone Traveller”, for example, Njugi portrays the figure of a ‘lone traveller’ whose interactions with his lover are both profound and fleeting, leaving an indelible mark that is not fully appreciated until after his departure. In the poem, “Bard Song”, he navigates a world where love and connection are simultaneously sought and resisted, leading to introspection and poetic expression. And in the poem “Sanaa Ya Ushairi (Ars Poetica)”, the last poem of Ujana and a personal favourite, Njugi wrestles with the nature of sadness, the scars of experience, and the refuge found in poetry as both a mask and a means of expression.
They say scars don’t make a man but I tarry mine in the language of the unscathed;
He writes in “Sanaa Ya Ushairi (Ars Poetica)” which literally translates to “The Art of Poetry”, a calculated ending as you come to realize this is what Njugi values most — the poetry in art and the art in poetry. All these other things — the fragmented city life, the journey into self, the brokenness that comes from loneliness, the coalition with family — are a backdrop of what is really important in his poetic mind and spirit.
As Njugi’s debut collection, Ujana is ingenious. While some poems offer reprieve, some resign themselves to the reality of the situation while others, like “Gatanga Benga”, simply exist to tell a story. It is a chapbook that one must read, and upon reading it, I am sure that you will come to the same conclusion as mine — that Njugi’s poetry is an organism, alive and vibrant.
Amanda Nechesa
Amanda Nechesa is a writer and poet from Nairobi, Kenya whose work seeks to explore the vulnerability of the human condition. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Brittle Paper, The Feminist Magazine, Isele Magazine, Fiery Scribe Review, Efiko Magazine, Kalahari Review, The Elephant, Voices Of The Revolution poetry anthology, the first and second editions of Qwani, and elsewhere. Her flash fiction was also longlisted in the 2022 Kikwetu Journal flash fiction contest.
When she is not writing, you will find Amanda in places she’s not supposed to be, looking for a muse.
