‘I started writing poetry because I had no other way to speak’: interview with poet and refugee Peter Kidi 

After his family fled conflict in South Sudan, Peter Kidi was born in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya – where he has spent his entire life. Today, he writes powerful poems about life in the camp; poems that are, as he says, written ‘from the inside not as a subject, but as a witness and creator’. Now his work is winning international attention, notably a collaboration with the UK’s London School of Economics that will lead to a publication later this year. He speaks to FP2P about his life, his art and what his community wants from international aid organisations. 

Could you tell us about your story? How did you and your family end up in the Kakuma camp? 

I was born in Kakuma refugee camp, but my life started in crisis before I even took my first breath. My parents fled South Sudan during the SPLA war. My mother was pregnant with me when they crossed into Kenya. They walked for days, terrified, exhausted, with no guarantee they’d survive. They arrived with nothing, just the hope that their child might be born somewhere safer. 

‎That child was me. 

‎I’ve never known another home outside Kakuma. I grew up in a place that was never meant to be permanent, where the ground is dry, the food is never enough, and the future is always uncertain. Every day was a reminder that we were living on the edge of systems, of nations, of attention. 

‎You grow up quickly in a place like this. I’ve seen hunger break people. I’ve watched my parents struggle to stay strong when everything around them was falling apart. I’ve watched my sister go through trauma no child should ever face. I’ve seen death, silence, and pain become part of everyday life. 

‎What hurts the most is that no one outside seems to be listening. 

‎Being a refugee didn’t just shape my life it defined it. I didn’t choose it, but it has shaped everything: how I think, how I dream, how I survive. 

‘I started writing poetry because I had no other way to speak. In Kakuma, there’s so much pain around you, but so little space to express it.’

‎How did you start writing poetry? What do you hope your poetry will achieve?

I started writing poetry because I had no other way to speak. In Kakuma, there’s so much pain around you, but so little space to express it. You grow up with questions no one is answering. You watch people suffer silently. After a while, that silence starts to live inside you. Writing became the only way I could release it. 

At first, I was just scribbling in notebooks stories, fragments, memories. Then I began shaping those thoughts into poems. Poetry helped me make sense of things I couldn’t talk about: the violence and abuse my dad inflicted on my mum, the shouting, the beatings, the silence that followed and how, after he left us, she carried the weight of everything alone, raising six children in a place already defined by loss. The hunger we faced, the hopelessness, the waiting, the anger, and the love that still lived in all of it. 

I write because I want the world to hear what we go through not in numbers or reports, but in human language. I want people to know we exist. That behind every food cut, every protest, every refugee statistic, there are real lives like mine. 

‎I write because I need to survive. And I hope my poetry helps others survive too. I hope it gives voice to those who’ve lost theirs. I hope it reaches someone who’s in a position to act, or someone who just needed to feel seen. 

‎What is your situation now? 

I’m still in Kakuma. Still walking the same dusty roads. Still writing in a place that feeds on waiting. 

‎But I’m also building. Slowly. With words. With wounds. With truth. 

‎The situation here has grown harder. We’re facing food cuts, water shortages, and policies like “differentiated assistance” that divide us into groups worthy and unworthy, helped and forgotten. These categories aren’t just technical they become emotional scars. Imagine watching someone beside you receive what your family is denied, just because a form somewhere placed them in a different column. 

‎I’m not in school now, though I dream of studying English literature. Sometimes I wonder if that dream is too big for someone like me. But then I remember why I write. I remember that poetry is my classroom, my megaphone, my act of survival. 

I’ve been fortunate that my poetry has reached beyond the camp, finding readers and collaborators who see the value in lived experience. That gives me a reason to keep going. Even when the future feels distant, I hold on to the pen it has taken me further than my feet ever could. 

‎How did the collaboration with LSE come about and what is your role? 

The journey began with a poem. A PhD student at the London School of Economics (LSE), came across my work online and reached out to me. She asked to include one of my poems in her thesis, and that opened a conversation about storytelling, silence, and resistance. 

‎She later introduced me to others at the LSE, who recommended From Poverty to Power as a platform where my voice could contribute meaningfully to global conversations about development, justice, and displacement. 

‎From there, something beautiful began to unfold. 

‎I’m now working with the LSE team as a contributor. Together, we’re developing a book set to launch in September that documents the food cuts in Kakuma, the protests that followed, and the police violence that erupted. This is more than a book. It’s a reckoning. It’s a space where testimony and poetry meet to speak the truth that press releases never print. 

‎My role is to write from the inside not as a subject, but as a witness and creator. I contribute poems and reflections that speak to the emotional and political realities of refugee life. 

‘Policies are drafted about us but never with us. Aid is designed like architecture above our heads, and when it collapses, we are the ones buried in the rubble.’

‎What would you like to say to people from international organisations working to support refugees? 

Start by listening not in boardrooms, but in the dust and silence of refugee camps. Listen to the women washing clothes in cracked basins. The youth scribbling poems in torchlight. The mothers skipping meals so their children can eat. 

‎Too often, we become statistics long before we are seen as human. Policies are drafted about us but never with us. Aid is designed like architecture above our heads, and when it collapses, we are the ones buried in the rubble. 

‎Support should not be charity. It should be collaboration. Refugees are not voiceless we are unheard. We are not helpless we are systemically ignored. 

I urge international organisations: go beyond symbolic consultations. Work with us, not just for us. Fund refugee-led initiatives. Include our art, our ideas, our intellect. Trust our insight not just our trauma. We live where the systems fail. We understand where they crack. 

‎And please stop measuring dignity in donations. 

‎Dignity is not something you give. It is something you honour. 

What are your hopes for the future, both personally and for your community? 

Personally, I want to study English literature, to keep writing and speaking from the cracks the world tries to seal. I want to publish books, speak truth on global stages, and leave behind a body of work that says we were here. We resisted. We created. 

‎But my dream is bigger than me. I want to help build a world where being born in a refugee camp doesn’t mean dying in one. A world where education is not a rationed privilege. Where no child must “prove” they are human just to be helped. 

‎I dream of a Kakuma where young people don’t have to escape to be seen. Where creativity is not stifled by hunger. Where survival doesn’t silence ambition. 

‎And for the world I hope it stops treating refugees as a humanitarian burden, and begins to recognize us as partners in building a more just future. 

‎We are not just victims of war and policy. 

‎We are thinkers. We are dreamers. We are witnesses. 

And we are still here. 

I Tried to Tell You 

By Peter Kidi 

‎For the woman who died in silence 

‎I wasn’t ready to write this. 

‎Not like this 

‎Not with her gone. 

 

‎Her name 

‎I... 

‎I’ll say it later. 

‎It still catches in my throat. 

 

‎She lived in a mud house. 

‎Block… 

‎Block… 

‎I 

‎Never mind. 

‎She lived. 

‎That should be enough. 

‎ 

‎Next to a dead tree 

‎with no leaves, 

‎that never once tried to lie about hope. 

‎She had four children. 

‎One is already dust. 

‎Three are still here 

‎still asking where mama went 

‎and when she’ll be back 

‎with ugali. 

‎I watched her unravel 

‎not all at once, 

‎but quietly. 

‎Like a thread 

‎slipping out of the needle. 

‎Like a voice 

‎no one asked to hear. 

 

‎Then came the food cuts 

‎no, 

‎the knife. 

‎Straight through her month. 

‎Straight through her spirit. 

‎ 

‎Then came 

‎“differentiated assistance” 

these words they use 

‎to decorate cruelty. 

‎To make it sound 

‎like logic. 

‎She didn’t “qualify.” 

‎Qualify? 

‎As if survival is something 

‎you sit an exam for. 

‎ 

‎She went to the shop. 

‎Took flour on credit. 

‎But you can’t fry debt. 

‎You can’t feed hope to your children 

‎and tell them it’s stew. 

‎ 

‎She boiled water, 

‎Peter. 

‎She boiled it 

‎like maybe if it bubbled loud enough, 

‎it would scare away the hunger. 

‎Like maybe steam 

‎could raise children 

‎when the world refused to. 

‎ 

‎She said, “Let it boil… they’ll think food is coming.” 

‎But it never came. 

‎And she 

‎she stopped coming back to herself. 

‎ 

‎You see, silence 

‎isn’t just the absence of noise. 

‎It’s the weight of a woman 

‎standing in a ration line 

‎being told she’s 

‎not needy enough. 

‎That’s the kind of silence 

‎that murders slowly. 

‎With forms. 

‎With policies. 

‎With polite emails 

‎that forget your name 

‎and remember your case number. 

‎ 

‎She held on 

‎even when her body 

‎began whispering exit signs. 

‎She held on 

‎past the laughter of officials 

‎driving past our house 

‎to talk “resilience” 

‎on a stage we couldn’t enter. 

‎ 

‎She held on 

‎until one night 

‎she couldn’t anymore. 

‎ 

‎I wasn’t there, 

‎but the neighbors heard the chair fall. 

‎She wrote something 

‎on the back of her last shopping list. 

‎I haven’t read it. 

‎Can’t. 

‎It smells like goodbye 

‎and wet salt. 

‎ 

‎They buried her 

‎too fast. 

‎Like shame. 

‎Like she embarrassed the system 

‎by making it obvious. 

‎ 

‎And now 

‎now her youngest calls me Mama. 

‎And I answer. 

‎Even when it breaks me. 

‎Even when I can’t boil anything 

‎but rage. 

‎ 

‎I write this 

‎because if I don’t, 

‎I’ll explode into a silence like hers. 

‎And maybe one day, 

‎when I finally say her name out loud, 

‎the world will pause. 

‎Will ache. 

‎Will look. 

‎Will remember 

‎that she once danced 

‎before the lines and hunger 

‎and quiet suffocated her. 

‎ 

‎Her name was Ayor. 

She was my mother. 

‎She mattered. 

‎And you 

‎you were too late 

‎to save her. 

 

‎But maybe you won’t be too late 

‎to listen 

‎now.