The woman who makes ‘Paper Dolls’ come to life

It scares the hell out of Nyachiro Lydia Kasese to think that her parents have read her newly released chapbook, Paper Dolls. She laughs at the thought and explains that her mother had recently returned one of her personal copies that she had lent her.

“She had it for over two months (I imagine she took that long with it because she had to say a prayer for my soul before proceeding to the next page). And she placed it quietly on my pile of books in my room. I did not ask her if she actually read it, I did not ask her what she thought of it. I do not think I want to know the answers, I don’t think she wants to have that conversation (if she has read it),” she says.

It requires a certain amount of boldness for Nyachiro to write the kind of poems she write. Paper Dolls was published in the ‘New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Set (Tatu)’ that was released in April, published by Akashic Press and edited by Kwame Dawes. The book set features works of D.M Aderibigbe (Nigeria), Gbenga Adesina (Nigeria), Kayombo Chingonyi (Zambia), Safia Elhillo (Sudan), Chielozona Eze (Nigeria), Ngwatilo Mawiyoo (Kenya), Hope Wabuke (Uganda) and Nyachiro Lydia Kasese (Tanzania).

Nyachiro (popularly known as Lydia) recalls how her relationship with poetry began in high school, when one day, her English teacher gave a composition assignment. At some point, the young Lydia ran out of ideas on the subject, and resolved to writing a poem instead. “I thought I would get in trouble for acting smart, but the teacher loved my poem so much that I got the highest mark I would ever get for the rest of my time in her class. In fact, she called me aside and told me to keep writing. I didn’t write poems for years, but then I met a boy and things changed,” she says.

Nyachiro explains that she wrote the poems in this collection at different points in her life. If you read through her work, you will understand why she gets scared sometimes. In Paper Dolls, she explores various themes around women including domestic violence and sexuality, a subject that she isn’t afraid to dwell on. Same sex relationships are lightly explored in her poem ‘Freedom-fighting cockroaches while in Pursue’, it is a bold exposition. She writes, “I’m swept off my feet. But I’m a woman. And so are you.”

Although she cares about her parents’ opinion, she doesn’t really mind what the rest of the world thinks. “People’s opinions are furthest from my mind when I write,” she says and adds: “You see, I write for myself and in that moment of writing for myself I think of me and how I feel, or how the other person made me feel. Even when I am done and ready to put my work out there, I am never worried about what people think of the content. At most my worries revolve around, ‘was it good enough?’ or ‘were people able to relate or feel something? That’s what matters to me,” she says.

However, Nyachiro does admit that her family are concerned about her boldness. A family member once said to her when she started writing, “be careful what you write, you should not shame our family name”. This was two years ago and she still remembers thinking, ‘but why is it just about you?’

“I think when it comes to my writing, it is only recently that my family has come to accept what I do. But I think it’s because they did not understand it and I don’t think that they do even now. But it’s sort of, ‘well, she got published so she must be doing it right” or something,” she says and adds: “I should also add that although my parents often don’t agree with my life choices, they do not persecute me for them and accept me the way I am.”

This isn’t the first time Nyachiro wrote thought-provoking prose. She is known for her poem, ‘Things that were lost in our vaginas’ that talks about domestic violence and how it is dealt with across a generation of women. The poem was longlisted in the 2014 Babishai Niwe Poetry Prize, a Ugandan based award. Aleya Kassam, a Kenyan writer writes of Nyachiro’s writing, saying that she has a way of writing something so difficult in a beautiful way, although it almost shouldn’t be.

Although Nyachiro writes a lot about themes around women, she says it isn’t a conscious decision. The poems ‘come’ to her and she writes them the way they come. No edits. “In retrospect I think that’s why it’s so hard for me to edit my poems, they will have already left,” she says. She explains that her poems have often been about helping her cope with a situation, or getting her out of a situation.

“I am not a very talkative person when I am sober, I tend to keep to myself. I have tried and failed for years to open up to people about my thought processes. So writing has sort of been that friend for me that I can openly talk to about stuff. But I always hope that my audiences will be able to find bits and pieces of themselves in my work,” Nyachiro explains.

Nyachiro, who is also a board member of Culture and Development East Africa (CDEA) and a Writivism Fellow, says that she would like to work on improving the reading culture in Tanzania. “I am not sure how yet, but I hope to figure it out soon. I’d like to start writing short stories. I find story writing to be much harder than other types of writing. But I would like to have a collection of stories published. Right now I have five stories in my head that I would like to write. But it’s kind of hard juggling a full time job, getting home at the end of the day and write,” she says. Nyachiro works as a Media Planner at Smart Codes in Dar es Salaam.