While incarcerated in Luzira Maximum Security Prison in Kampala, she wrote the collection No Roses from My Mouth: Poems from Prison.

She dedicated the poems to all women locked up in prisons in Uganda and the world over.

Some of the poems that were confiscated by prison warders did not make it to the collection.

Instead there are razor blades and axes

Chainsaws, knives and machetes

Daggers, swords and bayonets

My words cut up our enemies..."

Nyanzi talks about systemic violence in the poem Redeeming the Uganda Flag.

In her acceptance speech dated January 16, 2020, read by Danson Kahyana, President of PEN Uganda at The Hague, Nyanzi, said: “Can one believe that I am locked up in prison for writing a poem?