Stella Nyanzi is not mad, she’s a poet

I have been following Stella Nyanzi’s online poetry about the late Speaker, Jacob Oulanyah, with open mouthed surprise. 
Agreed, some of it is mere license being expressed in the name of liberty. 
However, I want us to reason with Nyanzi in order to understand what she is doing and who she is. 
A brilliant 1963 eulogy for poet Robert Frost by US president John F. Kennedy will help us do so as it describes poetry as “the means of saving power from itself”.
Poetry, it’s true, is about the spirit set free of a piteous existence and thereby unshackled of the pieties of society. 
Pieties which too many of us hold sacred. 
“I have been,” Frost wrote, “one acquainted with the night.” 
This is why his articulation of the ‘night’ was as clear as day. In this, he is like Nyanzi. 
She too has been acquainted with the ‘night’ and, through her poetry, this acquaintance is shared with us and we sincerely want it to read like one long smiley emoji? 
To be sure, her poetry saves power from itself by reminding power of its limitations. That way, “when power corrupts, poetry cleanses”. 
This cleansing involves airing our dirty laundry, which most of us hate to do and Nyanzi does so well. 
Kennedy noted that poets must remain faithful to their personal vision of reality, this helps them in their championship of the individual mind and sensibility against a state which increasingly tells us what to think or feel about what we may think or feel.
As the poet champions such individuality the poet has, as Frost said, “a lover’s quarrel with the world”. 
Again, in remaining faithful to a personal vision of reality, that poet must often sail against the currents of the times. This makes the poet’s words unpopular. 
Indeed, we are a society afraid of hearing its darker truths. This is why the fibre of our national life is starved on a diet of fallacies. 
When you see a poet, such as Nyanzi, launching rocks at the glasshouses of our sensibilities, it’s because she recognises that our senses are warped by a pursuit of personal gain as against our public interest. 
Many have labelled Nyanzi mad, her 57 poems about the late Speaker are their alibis when it comes to casting the first stone at her. 
However, she is not mad. She is fulfilling her calling as a poet in calling into question all those things that we hold sacred, but shall become dust when we are gone. 
Nyanzi and other poets are not here to amuse us, they are here to follow their personal vision, wherever it may take them. If where it takes them gives offense, so be it. 
Poetry is a form of truth and the truth frequently hurts. 
By many condemning Nyanzi’s poetry, I see her performing her duty as an artist to perfection. I would be worried if her poetry made her popular. 
Archibald MacLeish once remarked of poets, “There is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style.”
In a democratic society the highest duty of poets is not to put a smile on peoples’ faces, but to remain true to themselves by saying what they think or feel and letting the chips fall where they may.
In serving this personal vision of the truth, the poet best serves their nation. As a by-product, power and those obsessed by it are reminded that we can no longer afford the fate of having “nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope.”
Happy Easter!
Mr Matogo is a professional copywriter  
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