In my previous blog I mentioned a few things about my apartment that were still pending, before it could be friendly and therefore more habitable. When you think about it, all that’s missing should have been provided the moment I was given the key and taken on an inventory tour by the leasing agent. But […]
About MKB
Mildred Kiconco Barya is a North Carolina-based writer, educator, and poet of East African descent. She teaches and lectures globally, and is the author of four full-length poetry collections, most recently "The Animals of My Earth School" released by Terrapin Books, 2023. Her prose, hybrids, and poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Joyland, The Cincinnati Review, Tin House, New England Review, and elsewhere. She’s now working on a collection of creative nonfiction, and her essay, “Being Here in This Body”, won the 2020 Linda Flowers Literary Award and was published in the North Carolina Literary Review. She serves on the boards of African Writers Trust, Story Parlor, and coordinates the Poetrio Reading events at Malaprop’s Independent Bookstore/Café. She blogs here: www.mildredbarya.com
Things get better, then terrible
Just yesterday—Wednesday the 29th—my life was gingered. In my fiction section on Tuesday, we looked at how a local scene, theme or description can be emotionally powerful to resonate at a global level; the connection between the national and universal appeal, why some works hit the global canon, and we talked about food. Drinks. How […]
Birmingham Postcard
I’ve made one week in this discerning city, and it’s been fantastic. Before I showed up I didn’t know it was called the discerning city. In fact, am not even sure everybody knows that’s what it is, but when Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) offered me a job teaching creative writing, I emailed my […]
Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals: Yvonne Vera
My first time to read Yvonne Vera, about 14 years ago, I wished I had written most of her novels and short stories. One particular story that stood out was, Why Don’t You Carve other Animals. Lately I’ve been thinking about that story, rereading, and still wishing that I had written it. I first saw […]
“Hope, thin-bodied, is bent, never broken.” The Katrina poems by Niyi Osundare
Niyi Osundare, a professor at the University of New Orleans, managed to hide in the attic with his wife when Katrina struck. For more than 24 hours they waited for rescue, the waters rising, swallowing up everything, reaching their feet… All along, the couple calling 911. Around 2.30 in the night they got a […]
Niyi Osundare and Earth poems
Besides Jack Mapanje, we had Niyi Osundare, whom we loved because of his allegory, his closeness to Earth, how so attached he was to land. He reminded us of simple pleasures based on things you can touch and feel: the harvest of yams, peeling, cooking, pounding, and savoring the yam. We liked the sexual images […]
Skipping with Jack Mapanje
Continuing with exile, writing, language, fight for freedom and human rights, it’s not sufficient to mention what an Eastern European poet like Paul Celan has in common with African writing; for instance, Jack Mapanje. The consolation we find in language, however “foreign,” the haunting quality and the brokenness that language and rhythm carry to convey […]
Paul Celan on my mind
Paul Celan has been on my mind, particularly his most known poem, Death Fugue. The Romanian poet and translator wrote in German, but lived and died in Paris. I came to know his writings when I took a class on Eastern European writers, and never looked back because I found a lot in common with […]
Ray Bradbury Electric
The death of Ray is a hard one to take. I discovered him in our little library when I was a child, in a small village of Kabale, and started writing letters to him but never sent them because they were in my head. For me that was the beginning of liking fantasy as a […]
The world of Angela Carter and Nalo Hopkinson
I think one of the pleasures of great literature is to come to the end of a story and realize that you’ve read it before, but something magical, fantastical, or darker and absurd has been added to it. That’s the joyous feeling I get when I read Angela Carter and Nalo Hopkinson. I recognize their […]
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MKB: Dear Nyakisa, Good news! "The Animals of My Earth...
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Nyakisa Beth: Will it be available in Uganda?...
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Wm Epes: Dr. Barya: Hope you are well. Enj...
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