Update

Hi

What it is?

This is to thank you very very much for joining us at the previous meets and to give you a little insight into the Lantern Meet of Poets.

The Lantern Meet of Poets is a society of young writers with the major objective of restoring to Africa the era of Great Literary legends.
In effort to begin this journey, The Lantern Meet set out by inviting the public to enjoy poetry written by...who else but themselves.

African culture, like many great traditions of the past, was very rich in poetry that was expressed through song, verse and rhyme by which the history of
tribes, stories of the heroism of legendary warriors and society’s norms were passed on. It was also used by famous poets like Okot p’Bitek to tackle
several burning issues during the days of Africa’s self-rediscovery after independence.

It is a paradox, therefore, that there seems to be a great aversion for poetry especially within the current generation’s educated bracket of Africans.
This problem can be traced to secondary school level where poetry is often presented to students as a very complicated form of
Self expression/communication, rather than as ‘the art of communication that involves use of the best words in the best order.’
This makes most students- including even many Literature students- avoid it altogether. The result is that most people do not get to discover and/or
develop their talent for poetry. The few individuals with a real appreciation of the art find themselves isolated, with no one to share their passion.
They too eventually give it up. Thus the Lantern Meet of Poets.

The Lantern Meet of Poets has staged two (2) public poetry recitals that took place on the 16th of August, 2008 in the CICP room and on the 30th of January,
2009 in the main auditorium both at the National Theatre. We plan to have our third public recital in August 2009. The specific date will be communicated.

The Lantern Meet of Poets meets once a fortnight at the national theatre from 3pm to 6pm (when people keep time...please keep time). We request the poet to have their poems typed out and their name (author’s name) left out. This is done to minimise biases during the critic.

We have two kinds of meets. The themed and non-themed (open) poetry meets. During themed poetry meets, a theme is communicated to the members who are challenged to write towards that particular theme in whatever perspective they choose.
It so happens that the next meet (3rd May 2009) will be themed and the theme is ‘child abuse’. Please remember that we do not restrict you from thinking outside the box. You may play Devils advocate or Gods light!
During the non-themed poetry meets, the poets bring whatever mix of poetry they choose to.


Again, we would like to thank you for attending our meets and hope to see you again at our next meet on Sunday 3rd May 2009 from 3pm-6pm.


For more details you can contact the following:
Guy Mambo-0782451218
Jason Sabiiti Ntaro-0712815895
Pasi-0711163492
Ojakol Raymond-0752447509

I want to have sex!Yes you heard me….sex!!
Not emotional filled soft easy melodyScented candle love making.
Nah, Just rough sex,Biting necks, clawing at backs, tight reaps, long ass buffalo skinned whips
Wrapping and ripping my skin to bits.
Bodies raining a mix of blood and sweat,
No feeling of love or emotion
But of pain and aggression.

Intimacy minus intricacy,
That’s humanity.
We have bred a society of emotionless bodies
Take a look and you will see just what I’m saying.

We are dead to emotion,
we are dead to passion,
But we are alive to all things that bring death to this nation.
We’ve got troops in the Congos, got troops in Iraq,
But tell me a little something,
What exactly do they bring back?
Freedom for the people that are chained without trial,
Or food and comfort for the parentless child?
We’ve got rape victims that have been left out to rot,
And murderers lurking in the light of day knowing they wont get caught.
So why rally for love making,
When all emotions gone and all reality is hostility?

Thousands are dying,
millions of mothers starving so,
billions of children crying.
And all this coz we slaves to the metal and copper and the ink stained paper.
The needy are being suppressed by the greedy,
Politicians politicking
Keeping the masses sensitized
With empty lies
Disguised to fool the wise…

Instead of protecting the minds of the innocent
And raring them to be the breed different
We force feed them on the supple nipple of Corruption
Till them and the ill are made one.

How can one keep the country clean
When all this filth fills and flutters in and around the city
Under the guise of democracy?
How can we claim to be free from tyranny
When we live in a land of anarchy?
How can we sleep comfortably in our bed at night
When there are little girls Lurking in shadows in fright of their “new uncles”?

Fuck love making…
I’m sticking to hardcore,
Triple x porn fucking!!!

the nether-lands

I close my eyes and gaze thru the window.
The clouds sink lower,
Darkness engulfs the light,
Nothing is visible,
Nothing is sight.

The roads r dull,
The grass is damp,
The boots i once wore,
Now ware my soul down.

i take them off,
But my feet lack nature,
So I stand still and prolong my future.

The hurricanes have made bullets of sand,
these pebble r no longer part of this land.
So i stand in a river flow of salty water,
While selfishly,
Soft currents caress my current state.

It rains 2nyt,
Blurry vision so again no sight.
i look to the sky
As the skies tears wash the evil look from within my eyes…
.

perhaps i prayed wrong

perhaps i prayered wrong

I pray it rain
so I rid my soul
of ths filth tht is u...
and it does rain
but you're stil lurkin within.

Even with hard hail and strong winds
you still cling strongr to my withins
and drag me down even lower than I alredy was...
now my tears fill me
flowing freely
joining the rains that drape me closely
unable to tell being fluid from being fluid.


Perhaps I prayered wrong
because this pain tht should be long gone
wont even fade alitl...

now i wish 4 a drizzle.

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas 2 all Lanten Meet Poets!!!
Drink, Eat, Visit your loved ones and slaughter a cow or what ever you do during this time of the year!

Bless
xoxo

My definition of artistic identity

They say a man can have several faces
From several traces, of various influences,
That make his identity of relevance
To who he is, to who he aspires to be.
Although we all have different sides,
Assume different faces when in different places,
These sides end up entwined
Into one individual mind.
A unique entity
With endless possibility
Of creative capability
Such as these words of poetry, that surge within you and me
Making us who we be
Branches of the same tree
The definition of artistic identity.

copyright 2008 Elizabeth 'Eizzy.k' Kamugisha

At last Poetry finds a new haven

"Poetry is dead!" was the song my friend Paul sang in my ear when I dragged him to the National Theatre last August to watch a mutual friend of ours perform poetry live on stage. To be fairly honest, I agreed with him 200%. Back in my in my High School days, poetry wasn't exactly my cake of posho in literature class but I had a friend who was going up on stage to make a fool of herself and I could not pass up this opportunity to collect dissing material so on I went with an archaeologist's grin but BOY WAS I SHOCKED! Now normally I tend go overboard with descriptions when my cerebral cortex has been shocked into such awe that I'm robbed of my ability to form intelligible thought so here goes my attempt to shape off their spell. For starters these guys so broke every rule of being African that I am in doubt serious of their skin; FIRST, they started before time! Impressive heh, wait for this one…. They had a full house even before begun; Paul and I there on time and we floated seats! Okay so it was free but this is poetry we're talking about, how many Ugandans even know what that means. Any how the show begun, and my friend was second on stage. The mood started a bit shaky because there was too much light and the poems were short so just as the crowd begun to get it, pooff' the performer was off…..and then out of no where, like a boulder bay's crib, the mood changed. It was only then that I realised that the poems had been arranged carefully to carrot the audience into a trance and before they could realise where they were, it was all over- the shortest three hours of my life. Everything was so effortlessly prepared as if they did this for tea yet I new for a fact that they had been running around like headless chicken for three weeks without a clue of what they were doing. Like I said before I don't really like poetry so when I saw it impeccably dramatised on stage I had to check out these guys for myself. Apparently they call themselves THE LANTERN MEET OF POETS, full of themselves, right? That's exactly what I had in mind when I went to the National Theatre to see what they do. As it would happen, they meet every other Sunday to discuss their poetry. Nothing magical there until you sit in on one of them as I did last Sunday. I was going to meet poets so armed with my dictionary of poetic language I went determined not be ambushed, expecting to hear them hurl at each other words like anapaest and onomatopoeia (I had done my research) but first shocker here, everything was kept simple it was a conversation at a tea party The flow of discussion was very open and genuine though sometimes harsh but what struck me the most was the quality of poetry that was presented. These guys are not joking, they are good! I am not a writer but I was so inspired by these guys that I literally run to my keyboard and started hammering away and till I had this my first blog article and two poems. Talk about dominoes, they are that good. Is poetry dead? Maybe it once was for a while but in these Lantern Meet of Poet guys, it was resurrected. They are fresh and original but most importantly, when you are around them you can't help but feel the passion they have for poetry. To make it worse a lot of them had no Literature background. On the day I was there, there was a lecturer of pharmacy, two architects, a dentist, lawyers, psychologists and I could only guess what the others were doing I mostly appreciated the reference to poetry the basic yet highest form of artistic expression and when one the guys announced at the end that they were preparing an anthology, I almost jumped out my seat. These guys are the real deal. They put life into poetry. If what I heard is only a glimpse of what they can do, I am literally on my toes in wait……

Mathias Luswatta