Kingdom of Gravity

by Nick Makoha

A talent at the beginning of a genuinely important road. -- George Szirtes

In direct narrative terms the poems in this collection relate to the horrors of the civil war that ousted the brutal tyranny of Idi Amin in Uganda, a war of liberation that brought its own barbarous atrocities. In political terms the poems chart the impact of imperialism and neo-colonialism that lay behind those traumas in the life of the nation. In personal terms, the poems are framed between the contrary pulls of attachment and flight, exile and longing. At their heart is an unwavering curiosity about how people behave in extreme situations, and what this reveals about our common human capacities to indulge grandiose visions, betray them, dissemble, seek revenge and kill. There is no presumption of innocence. There may be flight, but there is no standing aside. The narrator can dream (but is it a dream?) of a "dead man/who has been stung by the invisible bee of my bullet"

Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Paperback

Published March 6, 2017

Reviews

[Shivanee Ramlochan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark urgency ripples on the skins of these poems, drawing blood, nightmare, and history. What Makoha makes for us here is an unsettled feast: of famine, of oppression, of the machinery used under Idi Amin's military rule. You don't have to wade too deep to get at the grave, gravid importance of these poems: Makoha brings it for you in language that sluices through abstraction, serving it at a table of want, promising you hunger.

[Des Bladet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some fierce verse inspired by Idi Amin’s takeover of Uganda, from which the author was a refugee. Very good on guerrilla warfare and the human cost of civil war.