BBC spotlights Somali poet in hiding

Somali poet Abdirashid Omar has been in hiding since publishing a poem critical of the Somali Islamist group at war with the interim government. Abdirashid told the BBC why he wrote the poem:

When I started doing this poetry initially, the aim was to tackle the social problems, then in December 2009 there was that attack - the Shamo Hotel attack in Mogadishu.

I was in a hotel in Eastleigh [a predominantly ethnic Somali inhabited suburb of Kenya's capital, Nairobi] that night watching television and I saw the bomb blast that killed several people who were graduating from medical school.

That night I could not sleep because it was so painful. It took me some four hours to make the poem Fatwo (the Decree).

The next morning I recorded the 10-minute poem and a week later I recited it - chanting it - to an audience in the border town of Garissa [where many Somalis in Kenya live].

By the next day, it was in circulation in Somali society.

It was that hideous, cruel act that provoked me, just made me write this poem.