100 Days

By Juliane Okot Bitek and Cecily Nicholson

100 days... 100 days that should not have been... 100 days the world could have stopped. But did not.

For 100 days, Juliane Okot Bitek recorded the lingering nightmare of the Rwandan genocide in a poem—each poem recalling the senseless loss of life and of innocence. Okot Bitek draws on her own family's experience of displacement under the regime of Idi Amin, pulling in fragments of the poetic traditions she encounters along the way: the Ugandan Acholi oral tradition of her father—the poet Okot p'Bitek; Anglican hymns; the rhythms and sounds of the African American Spiritual tradition; and the beat of spoken word and hip-hop. 100 Days is a collection of poetry that will stop you in your tracks.

It was the earth that betrayed us first

it was the earth that held onto its beauty
compelling us to return

it was the breezes that were there
& then not there

it was the sun that rose & fell
rose & fell

as if there was nothing different
as if nothing changed

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of Alberta Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781772121544

Juliane Okot Bitek

Writer Juliane Okot Bitek is a PhD Candidate with the University of British Columbia’s Liu Institute for Global Issues in Vancouver. Some of her essays and creative writing can be found at julianeokotbitek.com. Juliane Okot Bitek has never stopped exploring the power of narrative, focusing her passionate essays, poetry and nonfiction work on political and social issues. Her work has been anthologized and published widely on-line, in print and in literary magazines such as Arc, Whetstone, Fugue, and Room of One’s Own. In 2004, her short story Going Home won the Commonwealth Short Story Contest, and was featured on the BBC and CBC; her essay, War No More, won first prize in the post-secondary essay competition in 2005. Another essay, On Iris Chang’s Rape of Nanking, won a special mention in 2006 and is included in an anthology of winning essays from that year. In 2007, Juliane received a Canada Council grant which supported her writing a collection of non-fiction. Juliane Okot Bitek holds a Master’s Degree in English and a BFA in Creative Writing, and is currently a PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Students Graduate Program at the University of British Columbia’s Liu Institute for Global Issues. Her doctoral research focuses on post-conflict narratives of formerly abducted women in northern Uganda. Along with northern Ugandan women’s advocate Grace Acan, she recently co-authored the book Stories from the Dry Season. Juliane has been an invited poet at the International Poetry Festivals of Medellin, Colombia (2008) and Granada, Nicaragua (2009). She continues to write and speak about issues of home, homeland and diaspora.

Reviews for 100 Days

[james.d.gifford · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is stunning – in both senses. The writing is beautifully crafted, but the poetry itself hits the reader hard. I've read it half a dozen times now, and each time I've gone through it in a single sitting. The relentlessness of its progress expresses the history it tells while at the same time the craft of the telling gives the reader hope.

100 Days was a finalist for an armload of awards (Pat Lowther Award from The League of Canadian Poets, the INDIEFAB Book of the Year for Poetry, the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, & the Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry) and won the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry and the AAUP Book, Jacket & Journal Show, Book prize for Poetry and Literature.