It is found in the confines of a flowered letter, written in manicured handwriting and delivered like contraband to a giggling teenager whose taste buds are yet to know what heartbreak tastes like. And when she finally does, she will still turn her pain into poetry.
It is found on a humorless afternoon, when the grim reaper pays a visit to a young, happy family, and suddenly, the only language left for their snots, hiccups, and grief is poetry.
In the same breath, poetry has stood with us on the frontlines. We have used punchlines as armor against social injustices. We have turned to prose to name the unfathomable, the senselessly terrible; femicide, gender-based violence, extra judicial killings; you name it, there is a poem for it.
We have written about love, birds, about aircrafts, about pain, and about matters of the heart, because poetry is like water, finding its way into all these conversations. You will find it dining with kings and you will also find it in a jam session where one poet randomly puns,
“Today I woke up with an itch…scratch that,”
To me, poetry is synonymous with the letters Franz Kafka wrote to Milena: The agonies, the sleepless nights, the beauty. It is my dictionary of love, and the epitome of all, the mirror. Poetry reflects our innermost thoughts, the things that keep us awake or the dreams that find us in the nights, the words that taunt our tongues, daring us not to hold back. And yet as philosophical as the aforementioned sounds, poetry is as simple as just an expression.
Words have been planted like seeds in the hearts of young dreamers, Mufasa Poet calls them poetrees. And in this year’s edition of World Poetry Day, we are reminded of just how diverse our voices can be, especially across languages.
Nakuru, in particular, has always been a home for poetry. There is a running joke that if you throw a pebble into the air, it will land on a poet.
This year, we proudly carry home the crown of the 2026 Poetry Slam Africa Champion, with Timelines, a member of the Baraza Community here in Nakuru holding the title, Mr. 67th. When asked what poetry means to him, he retorts back with a question: What am I without poetry? And as a poet, I concur.
The 67th Poetry Slam Africa Champion-Timelines
Art is what sets us apart. It gives us the burden and the privilege of expression, of romanticizing womanhood and love, interrogating justice, seeking to stir minds hopefully be the change we always want to see and often, we do not fully grasp the weight of certain truths until we hear them spoken by a poet.
Looking at linguistic diversity, we consider aspects like style, the multi or monolingual use, code switching and language phonetics. Case in point:
“Mi’ ni darkness…
Funny how you consider me scary, but vitu mnafanya in my presence I am clearly a safe space.
Mi’ ni giza, watu hawana creativity wako na talent ya kunichora,
Watu guilty wanafanya injustices in my presence but since kwa forehead haiwezi jiandika nawachorea”
Here, Timelines metaphorizes darkness using the Sheng’ language. He embodies darkness itself, speaking in the first person, walking us through the gory realities that happen behind closed doors.
King Mbunge, the 51st Poetry Slam King, and a member of the Baraza Nakuru community, approaches language like a craftsman. Before writing, he sits with riwayas, kamusis, data and research, breaking them down into digestible hard truths like with his album, Vita Vya Vina:
King Mbunge’s Album- Vita Vya Vina
When addressing extra judicial killings, he says,
“We ni bidhaa kwa stock ya mwanabiashara, utaangushwa ka’ bei ya jioni.”
And then,
“Deep, ndani ya ardhi naskia vilio.
Imebaki tu mifupa lakini bado inatoa sauti miili hiyo…
Hata ardhi inalalamika uzito ya kubeba secret graves za wasojulikana waliko…”
And this is the beauty of poetry, the ability to paint a perfect picture using the spoken word.
For Baraza Media Lab, this day celebrates the team that sits at the intersection of poetry and community. In the Nakuru hub Samuel Njoroge, alias Priest the Poet, is the hub’s Community and Operations Associate, while I (Nyash) serve as the Events and Communications Coordinator. In Baraza Media Lab Mombasa, Rajab Salim, or Malenga001 carries the same mantle. We celebrate the work we do, the communities we build, and the words we write.
Happy World Poetry Day to all Poets!