Two years ago, I was voted vice president of the Poets Association of Uganda (PAU). That organisation, which was about three years old at that point, was already riven by faction and corruption. So my election ensured I sipped the bitter swill of a poisoned chalice.
When members’ egos proved larger than the organisation, I offered my resignation, and most of the cabinet followed suit. However, as they put in their resignation letters, I was persuaded to stay put.
Constitutionally, I was to be elevated to the PAU presidency, but this did not happen. So no decisions could be made. That’s when I started the Uganda Poetry Society (UPS) and made sure I gathered fellow-travellers around me who put poetry before poets in order to put poets at the steering wheel of poetry.
Due to a crabs-in-a-bucket mentality common in Uganda, I made sure the founders of UPS were multinational and multiracial. I also declared myself president, much to the chagrin of many.
My vice president was an Asian professor called Ampat Koshy; other members included a UK-based PhD Literature student called Parvathy Salil, also Asian. Three Americans: Cindy Marie Camp, Victoria Adams and Katherine Rascoe, who had helped create the Songs of Kiguli poetry series in Nakasongola barracks.
A Nigerian poet and lawyer called Emenobazi Usetu Unoh. The rest were Ugandans, namely Eva Rukikaire Mwine, Edna Kusiima, Paul Obonyo, Ddumba Nyanzi and Harlord Ankwasa.
All the Ugandans, save for Ankwasa, had no experience in leading Ugandan poets and so they didn’t come with any unwanted baggage. They sought a fresh start. Our organisation was not limited to Uganda; it was to serve as a Marxian battle-cry uniting poets all over the world.
The Ugandan poetry fraternity initially scoffed, believing this to be a vanity project. Then we acquired members outside the run-of-the-mill poets. One of whom was an American, Col Dr Ivan Edwards, whom we urged to curate the annual Dr Ivan Edwards Poetry Award with a grand prize of $1,200 (Shs4.6m) under the aegis of UPS.
The judges were Dr Koshy, Dr Stella Nyanzi, Joanitah Atuhaire, Jesse Unoh and Alex White, a Cambridge University PhD. To avoid personalising UPS, more than 400 members voted in a new cabinet led by Priscilla Atim.
The cabinet was full of university students because we don’t believe the youth are future leaders if they can’t lead now.
A UPS constitution was promulgated to guide and guard all poets’ interests, domestic and foreign. The UPS patron is the venerable Prof Timothy Wangusa, a man whose reputation precedes him in literary circles the world over.
In Leninist thought, there is what is known as Vanguardism, a political philosophy stating that a small, disciplined group of conscious workers must lead the broader working class to overthrow capitalism.
Our brand of Vanguardism was shaped by UPS founders to overturn the disorientation and dislocation in the global poetry fraternity.
After benefiting poets, our top-up leadership philosophy focuses on empowering the grassroots to drive national progress, rather than relying strictly on top-down directives. It prioritises investing in citizen capability, local institutions, and community-led initiatives to build sustainable democratic institutions.
Thus, instead of merely criticising what has gone wrong in Uganda, we chose to represent what is right in Uganda in order to be the change we wish to see in the world.