On Saturday, 20th September, I was catching my breath in Storymoja’s Artists’ Lounge in Nairobi’s National Museum when Beverley Nambozo insisted that we attended Njeri’s panel. Njeri Wangari had challenged a group of poets, Beverley inclusive, to respond to some poetry by the recently deceased Maya Angelou. The session was the ‘Call/Response’, and in attendance was Neal Hall(USA), Ladan Osman(USA/Somalia), Liyou Libsekal(Ethiopia), Esther-Karin Mngodo(Tanzania), Nyachiro Lydia(Tanzania), and El Poet(Kenya).

Njeri started off by reading ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings‘, after which the poets took turns in performing their poetic responses. From the photographs they clearly had more fun than was legit…

Ladan’s actual words were entertaining enough, but… the point of this series is fiction…