About Me

A little anecdote on myself...

So my name's Alfani Ndayishimiye and I'm a final year LLB Law student at the University of Westminster. My enthusiasm for literature predates my discovery of it in secondary school. Being born in Burundi, my first language is Swahili and so coming to the UK, I had experienced English as an outsider and now as another 'native' speaking millennial following years of integration, I was able to see how nonsensical sounds become words with meaning and rules.

I began to read the likes of John Donne, Emily Brontë, Charlotte P Gilman, Alain de Botton, J. D. Salinger, Louis de Berniéres, John Green, and among my favourites, Sylvia Plath, all which revealed my love for literature as an Art. I grew an aesthetic for vocabulary, syntax and the possibilities that language has to offer. After all, it is what separates us from other beings: the ability to articulate and share complex thoughts and ideas that help us organise and interact in novel ways. It allows people with completely different views of life to share a narrative or concept. Language is part of the algorithm that goes into how we shape our reality and is how wisdom and tradition pass between generations. It is also how you are able to hear in your mind, a thought that was once in mine.

​Alfan's Poetry Corner is an opportunity for me to share my thoughts in attempt to challenge the status quo and societal ideals that we have become habituated to. It is also a vessel through which I hope to spark new ideas in others such as yourself and stimulate a new form of higher level thinking (conscientious awareness) that we are all sometimes deprived of because we are so distracted by the social media society, duties of capitalism and daily stressors.

Relax...

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