They say the journey of 1000 miles starts with one step. This is a true description of a young poet’s journey to poetry. Saliim Isihaka Hakizimana, whose stage name is ‘Prince Waziel’, 25, is living his dream of entertaining, inspiring, and educating through poetry. His work rotates around composing a line or a paragraph about anything his mind apprehends. This could be about his personal life, a conversation with friends, a movie, or basic life. Apart from poetry, he also writes movie scripts, which he says were inspired by his uncle, Omar Muqtar, a scriptwriter and actor. Although he showed an interest in writing just to be like him, his uncle advised him to first focus on his studies. While in primary school, he started writing quotes to encourage his colleagues in school, and for him, writing helped him express himself better. Believing that his quotes transformed lives at a tender age, he realised that it was high time he perfected his writing skills. Years later, it was the quotes that triggered Prince Waziel to write a film script, dubbed, “Unexpected tears,” a story about his personal experience. It took him about four months to write the script. Unfortunately, he never succeeded in getting funds to put the movie into action, and although his dream was to take part in local movies, he has never been given a chance to showcase his acting talent. He, therefore, resorted to fully focusing on poetry last year. He wrote his first poem titled, “Who am I? and then many more like, “Why do I surrender?”, “The heat of my desires”, “Promise”, “You”, “I can’t wait”, among others. Today, he has over 45 poems, six of them already recorded and uploaded on his YouTube channel. “Recording is hard, as it requires me to be in a specific mood that I was in while writing the poem. I am supposed to use my voice differently as it changes depending on what I am expressing,” he says. The devoted poet stresses that his voice is a bit gentle when recording motivational poems and soothing when citing love poems. Prince Waziel is also a member of the Writers Space Africa-Rwanda (WSA) that trains poets to be experts in poetry. Members are taught about flash literature, childrens literature, prompted poetry, drama quotes, literature reviews, poetry battles, and so forth. For them, every day is worth knowing something about poetry. What comes into Price Waziel’s mind while writing, is first, to leave a legacy. He centers his message on telling stories that inspire, entertain, educate yet pass on the message of confidence and reassurance, especially to young people who think they are not worthy. He prefers writing about reality than fiction. Once an idea clicks in his mind, he doesn’t jot it down instantly, but rather gets a deeper meaning about it before coming up with a complete poem. The youngster also believes that writing is not about just expressing and using complicated words, but rather, building words and sentences that make meaning. “If people can’t understand your message, then you are not communicating,” he emphasizes. Although his hobby, Prince Waziel wishes to one day earn from poetry. One of his biggest challenges, however, is that there is no one to invest in his career as people invest in established and known poets. The spoken word expert is disheartened by people who duplicate his work and circulate it on social media when it has lost meaning, a thing that leaves him questioning their intentions. He holds a Bachelors in Computer Science. Apart from poetry, he has a barbeque business and does meat deliveries in Kigali. He is also a marketing personnel at a local IT firm.
