SAWTI Poetry Prize 2019 celebrates its debut winners

By +Caroline Anande Uliwa

Facilitator Nancy Lazaro (in focus) during
workshops held prior to the deadline for SAWTI poetry prize 2019

Belonging in the third world you can be oblivious to the nuances of that detriment. As the squeezed potholed streets are our home, the varying tones of the street hawker are our songs, the chorus of scolds from the teacher of 80+ students make of our routines; for us it’s not a third world, just our world.

This introspection into belonging was thoroughly mused on by a project called SAWTI. It is founded and programmed by Dutch born native Somalian Sumia Jaama. SAWTI took off after receiving a grant from the British Council under its program ‘New Art, New Audiences’ open call for 18-35 year old artists, art organisations and or art collectives.

Poetry workshop participants in the workshop
organised by SAWTI in Dar es Salaam earlier this year

This project ran a poetry prize since July this year titled SAWTI Poetry Prize calling for three poems each in Kiswahili, English or Arabic; from applicants hailing from East Africa and or East Africans of the Diaspora living in the U.K. The results were announced earlier this month, here Tanzanian native & citizen Ngollo Mlengeya scooped the Kiswahili poetry prize, Alycia Pirmohamed scooped the English poetry prize (she was raised in Canada but her parents have roots in Tanzania, she is now studying in the U.K). Basheer Abusan is the gentleman who took the Arabic poetry prize he is a native and citizen of Sudan.

Alycia Pirmohamed English Poet winner for SAWTI poetry prize 2019

“We name our bodies / anything that means to gather / flock into belonging

…/ we stumble into our blood / wild animals yoking together” -an excerpt from Alycia Pirmohamed’s winning poem titled ‘Self-Portrait as a lost language’.

The theme which the applicants had to succumb to in this poetry prize looked at ‘poetry as preservation’. Alycia is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, where she is studying figurative homelands in poetry written by second-generation immigrant writers.

Her studies gave her a leg up in this competition as one can see poetry as preservation is well lived in her field of study. “The poems I look at are so personal and intimate, and I appreciate each experience of reading them, of experiencing the uniqueness of their spirituality. Sometimes that experience is joyous and thriving, and other times it might be more political, more questioning, complex and difficult. In all cases, these poems are powerful and really show how poetry works as preservation and resilience. “Alycia affirms.

Aspiring poets in Zanzibar posing after a workshop organised
by SAWTI prior to the deadline for the poetry prize in August this year

‘Sauti ya utulivu ikanijia |Tulia, achilia, tulia achilia...|Naachilia majonzi ndani ya moyo wangu|Naachilia watu niliowafunga kifuani kwangu|Naachilia mitazamo ya akili yangu |Naachilia matarajio yangu| Natulia, Naachilia’ an excerpt from Ngollo Mlengeya’s winning poem titled ‘Bahari’. 

Ngollo Mlengeya the Kiswwahili poet winner
for SAWTI poetry prize 2019

From this artwork it’s fair to say what Ngollo illustrates as worthy of preservation for us East Africans is the introspective journey into surrender. “...I think for me this was to show that you have to know; what you can control and what you can’t. And the things you can’t it’s time to let go, I mean if they’re yours to come then they will, if they’re not then, you just have to let them go.”Ngollo shares the ethos behind her winning poem.

This lesson of letting go is one Sudanese Poet Basheer illuminates aptly in his entries to this prize “As you know for the past thirty years, the ruling political system in our country has adopted ideological attitudes that significantly reduced our recognition as a people of Africa...My generation, we managed to get rid of that with a peaceful popular revolution, so most of my poems come with this spirit and the longing for peace, freedom and justice.

Basheer Abusan the Arabic poet winner of the
SAWTI Poetry Prize 2019

The poem I handed in ‘Mosdar’ comes from a popular Sudanese word...associated with poetry by/of itinerant shepherds and people living outside the cities. Here I monitor the journey of our loss in Sudan and our social fluctuations...My final poem handed in the prize ‘For a sad singer’ questions identity through folklore airing concerns of the future, while talking about our revolution and its future.” Basheer answers on what role he sees his poetry playing in preserving the memories, the lives of his people.

SAWTI in galvanising applicants for its debut poetry prize held workshops prior to the deadline of entries in various cities in East Africa and the U.K. Among them were Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Khartoum & London. 

The facilitators included award winning poet Sumia Jaama who is the winner of FourHubs’ 2018 Poetry Prize, a Barbican Young Poet Alumni and a recent graduate of the Creative Writing and Education MA at Goldsmith.

Another facilitator was Amaal Said she is a Danish-born Somali photographer, poet, based in London. Nancy Lazaro from Tanzania was another facilitator who ran the workshops in Dar es Salaam. She is a youth development advocate a 2014 Mandela Washington Fellow, (the Young African Leaders Initiative by President Barack Obama) a 2016 Global Citizen Youth Advocate.

Sumia had this to say of the journey in facilitating for these workshops and ultimately gaining the 513 poems the prize cornered in its debut year. “I was really impressed with the dialogues that came from the workshops and the number of entries we received. It served us to open the prize with more than one language; we saw how these three languages influence each other while occupying different regions. How that in itself opens the scope of how East Africans identify. 

The politics of what does a ‘national’ language mean and who does it serve was also great to uncover? This has prompted us to think in future iterations of the prize we can open submissions in even more languages.”

Workshop participants in the workshop held by SAWTI in Zanzibar

The prize was judged by three experts for each language namely Safia Elhillo-English, Neema Komba-Kiswahili and Marwa Babiker-Arabic. You can learn more of their credentials here as well see the full bio’s of the winners and read their winning poems in full. https://sawti.co.uk/poetry-prize/

Given the judges stellar credentials one still will agree that one judge per language for poetry isn’t ideal, when asked to comment on the same. Sumia responded “. I agree that having more judges per language would have served the applicants better, however as it was the first year of the prize and we wanted to serve more than one language, it meant that we were only able to budget for one judge per prize... I think the judges did an excellent job despite this, particularly as detailed reports were submitted on how the selection was made, having a shortlist also helped with that.”

All the winners have received 500 GBP as a prize and they will be published in a Zine facilitated by the project come early next year. When asking them how they felt to win, they were all very humbled and inspired to see their craft accepted as a valid career.

This article was first published in The East African Newspaper with this link

Poetry as Preservation SAWTI clocks its winners