“They are wolves,” says top-flight Ugandan poet Ngobi Kagayi, when talking about a new crop of poets. “They do not know the power of collectives; most of them do not even read.”

There is a crisis which has rewritten the narrative of what it means to be a poet in Uganda and repurposed it as a sort of word salad that has left the poetry industry reeling. Kagayi was talking about the so-called young poets, as many of them call themselves, who are newly-minted in the field of Ugandan poetry.

It is true that even Homer nods; says a famous aphorism about human fallibility. Indeed, none of the different generations of Ugandan poets is perfect. That is why a clash of orientations among poets should be tractable. But what is happening in the world of poets reflects warring worlds, instead of a unity of purpose.

Poets of old

But how did we reach here? To answer that question, let us return to the giants upon whose shoulders we stand. Okot p’Bitek, a Ugandan poet, novelist, and social anthropologist, is by no means Uganda’s first poet. However, his three verse collections—Song of Lawino (1966), Song of Ocol (1970), and Two Songs (1971)—are of the first magnitude. He has inspired countless poets with his ascendant yet accessible verse.

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