Blue Mothertongue by Ngwatilo Mawiyoo: book review

Blue Mothertongue (2010) is a collection of urban poems by Nairobi poet, actor, and muscian, Ngwatilo Mawiyoo.

This is her first collection of poetry, and it includes 29 short poems, all set in the city of Nairobi, capital of Kenya.

The poems focus on the African diaspora with themes of home, identity, generations, migration, death, mourning, and ‘hybrid love’. There are poems of the government census, and the death of a pothole, as the road is resurfaced.

But the anthology also includes the simplicity of natural beauty – the jacaranda trees and their ‘blissful blue’ carpet of colour, and the vividness of the bougainvillea flowers.

Like the jacaranda blueness, ‘We hope the ritual will us blissful while blue, free, decidedly bold even.’

Simple, honest, evocative poetry in a small booklet to carry with you, it is an interesting collection of poems that explore urban living and dreaming.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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