"I do not regard myself as a poet. And I am not saying this out of modesty. People say I am, but I really am not. I think a poet is someone who writes poetry oftenly. I don’t. I do so only occasionally – once in a very long while. For instance, if somebody had written an article or two on a particular topic in history, would you call that person a historian? To me, a poet is somebody who is always at it – composing poetry regularly, which I don’t. People just decided to call me a poet because of this one book, Sauti ya Dhiki, which I wrote when I was in prison. Perhaps if I would not have been imprisoned, maybe I would not have written any poetry. I do not know. So I do not regard myself as a poet, but as somebody who happened to have scribbled a few poems."
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Abdilatif Abdalla
Abdilatif Abdalla (born 1946) is a Kenyan writer and political activist. He was imprisoned for his support of the Kenya People's Union and began writing poetry in solitary confinement. A collection of poems from this time were published as a book titled Sauti ya Dhiki (Voice of Agony), which was awarded the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature.
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