description: Something quite unlike myself is a book trying to explore experimental poetry as a tool to navigate finding a space for oneself in a world constantly clamouring for your attention. I wrote it as a way to try and understand what is going on in the world while trying to understand what I make of it as well. Usually one is asked ‘what inspired this book?” Well, poetry did. The idea that poetry can somehow move, change, create and sometimes destroy worlds that we see. It can see through the world as it is, and, sometimes, even as we would like it to be. I wanted to write poetry that talks about Kenya, being young in Kenya and (not)understanding how the system (doesn’t) work. The name “Something Quite Unlike Myself” is that because that’s what the book navigates, being a stranger in your own body. Being a stranger in your own city, your own country. So, while the book is much about looking, and failing, to find oneself. It is also about the state of affairs in the country. It is about a political class that is completely oppressing the class below it. And a middle class that seems okay with this oppression. It is about reconciling the idea that somehow things will get better with the reality that – without any real work from us – they won’t.
title: Something Quite Unlike Myself