The Parade (reviews in)

I know I haven't said much about my little kids book project from last year/early this year, but it is out there and it is slowly growing a following and some lovely reviews have come in which I'm happy to share with you now:

This collection of trickster tales is lively and entertaining and will be an essential component of any teacher's story collection.
Back to School Bookseller

With their vibrant sense of fun and cunning these stories are sure to have an enduring appeal.
Booktrust

These delightful stories can be dipped into by relatively new independent readers, but also read well if you are sharing the stories with your child. The setting in Ghana adds exotic appeal and poet KP Kojo creates a fresh experience quite different to most children's books.
Junior

Not only very energetic and entertaining, these tales also encourage children to be well-mannered and polite.
Carousel

This wonderful collection of stories expands Ananse's myth with sparkling wit and words that roll off the tongue. K.P. Kojo has clearly written this refreshing new book to be read aloud and shared.
ABC Best Books for Children

The collection of six stories both read well, and sound well when read aloud, with the lively imagery of the text supported by the black and white line drawings. Each tale has a moral to be told - although part of the fun with Ananse is that you never quite know whether you are going to be following his example, or learn from his mistakes!
School Librarian

All six short stories are simply and assuredly told and, unsurprisingly, are delightfully set and are perfectly complemented by the illustrations of Karen Lilje, all drawn in black and white except for the cover. The moral in all of them is clear and it is interesting to see how even Ananse, despite all his wisdom, can err. The spider is aware of his own shortcomings and in the sixth story he is initially hiding in the forest reflecting upon this. This is a lovely book which is worth considering as an addition to any library supporting children in KS1 and lower KS2. Class teachers looking for multicultural stories for their classes would enjoy this book and so would new independent readers.
Armadillo Magazine

The ink illustrations will capture the younger children's imaginations, and the stories are short enough to be enjoyed as individual bedtime stories. The stories are very clearly told but with wonderful descriptive writing, setting the scene for each story and giving a little background information on the characters involved. A delight to read.
Ibby Link

This book will transport you to Africa as you get caught up in the rich, descriptive text and fast moving narrative.
English 4-11

To Buy:

THE PARADE (as K.P. Kojo) in the UK:http://bit.ly/aVnE3I

THE PARADE (as K.P. Kojo) in the US:http://amzn.to/g4rrvV

August Advances

I've become a useless doting dad. All the hustle, travel, reading, performances and (gulp!) even the writing, everything has settled to a simmer in my life and the only thing popping is Little-Miss-Daughter who (I kid you not) is amazing! She's 20 months old and already she's having conversations with me in Ga and English and scolding me (no more, Daddy, no more!). I used to think my mother was making things up when she told me the really complicated things I am supposed to have said at the age of three, but I'm beginning to believe. The human mind is truly, truly amazing! What I can't get my head around is the fact that we lose pretty much all our memory of events up to the age of 3/4, but we don't forget the things we learn e.g. language, whether or not to be afraid of dogs etc. etc. It's mind-boggling. Anyway I'll bore you no longer with Daddyhood. The good thing, with hindsight, is, I did so many sleepless nights BEFORE my daughter was born that it seems I will be releasing new work until I finish the next project. In the meantime, here are some updates.

Tail of the Blue Bird was selected by Writers' Centre Norwich as one of their Summer Reads and right through the year it's been promoted in local bookshops and libraries, which has been amazing. The initiative is now coming to an end, but until the end of August, Tail of the Blue Bird is being discussed online as well as at a special Tail of the Blue Bird Book Club Session at Writers’ Centre Norwich, 14 Princes St, Norwich, Tuesday 24th August, 6pm. To join the online discussions, just go the the WCN Facebook Page. You can even check out their reading guide.

Sticking with discussions, Tail of the Blue Bird, stands a one-in-eleven chance of being chosen for discussion at the African Writers's Evening book discussion on Friday September 17 at the Poetry Cafe and YOU GET £4 toward the cost of the book too. To vote for Tail of the Blue Bird and find out more, visit: African Writers' Evening

Now, book news - or new books news :) I mentioned the release of a Dutch version of Tail of the Blue Bird and I can confirm that it is now out and selling well (you can see it on the publisher's website) and so is the German version (also on the publisher's website), which has had a couple of decent reviews this week [Links: Die Spiegel | Watching the Detectives ]. Well, I'm guessing that they're good because I couldn't make real sense of the automatic translation!

I have also now held in my hands a physical copy of my children's book The Parade (pictured on the left) and I can assure you that it feels good. Plus I am assured that I will receive in tomorrows post a few copies of my début full poetry collection The Makings of You. I am giving five copies away, so the best five pleas I receive detailing why you should get a copy in tweet-length (i.e. text or 140 characters) will get them. I'll reveal the winners at the end of the month :) Of course, this doesn't mean don't buy the book - I need you to buy it so I can earn some royalties, but you can flog the one you bought if you win!

And finally, drum roll... the long-awaited US release! It is still long-awaited, the release date has been pushed back to 20 January 2011, but you can now pre-order it on amazon.com or BN.com AND I will be coming to the US in January/February for a whole month to promote it (with the other two books, of course!). My first reading/signing is likely to be in Rochester, NY but I'm still trying to fix dates so if you know of a local bookstore or college/university that would like to have me visit/sign/read/teach and it's on the East Coast, please contact me so we can work something out. Not many people have seen what the entire cover will look like, but... eyes-left - voila! You're the first, my fans, my everything!

what i'm reading/listening to

listening:
Omara Portuondo - la novia del filin

reading:
Arthur Gakwandi - The Novel and Contemporary Experience in Africa

Quick and dirty grub for writing

Recipe:

King Prawn & Spinach Pasta

[Total preparation and cooking time 10-15 minutes]

This dish is one my writing phase quickies, but it’s also apt at this time [August 2010] because Tesco have had 50% off their raw king prawns for a while. Due to my use of sesame oil, you will find it’s not great with cheese, but you can use olive oil instead and Italian it up…

Ingredients:

• Pasta or Spaghetti (I tend to go with spaghetti myself)
• Spinach (you can use as much as you want – remember it reduces drastically in volume when cooked)
  
• 2 tbsp sesame oil King prawns
• Garlic (minimum 2 cloves)
• Salad/spring onions (if you cut these very small they go in after the prawns)
• Fresh chopped or sun dried tomatoes Salt and pepper (according to taste)

Preparation:

1. Cook and drain the spaghetti/pasta (preferably al dente) and leave in a bowl.
2. While the spaghetti/pasta is cooking, wash the spinach, chop the garlic and onions and place to one side.
3. Heat the sesame oil in a frying pan, sauté the garlic for a minute then throw in the spring onions (I tend to cut them prawn size and like them tender but you can always add them later). Add in the prawns and stir fry the contents of the frying pan for a minimum of three minutes (make sure the prawns have turned pink) adding the spinach in the last minute.
   
4. Toss the stir-fried mixture with the spaghetti/pasta

Serving:

On hot days I let the dish cool and eat it with fresh chopped tomatoes. On standard English days I eat it hot with sun dried tomatoes. I tend not to use salt (especially when I cook seafood), but I do use loads of fresh ground black pepper/corns.

what i'm reading/listening to

listening:
Mary J. Blige - The Breakthrough

re-reading:
Junot Díaz - Drown

Prize & Praise

Two things.
Quickly.

ONE - 'Tail of the Blue Bird' made the shortlist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book, YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Djama all night :)
TWO - I found a new, short but lovely, review of 'Tail of the Blue Bird' in the current issue of World Literature Today that 'got' some of the politics behind my aesthetic choices. Good times!

Review from World Literature Today, January-February 2010

Nii Ayikwei Parkes. Tail of the Blue Bird. London. Jonathan Cape. 2009. 176 pages. £12.99. isbn 978-0-224-08574-8

One of the most curious attractions of Tail of the Blue Bird is its privi­leging of Ghanaian languages over English. Nii Ayikwei Parkes tells a wonderful narrative where all the "English" words are italicized and the Ghanaian words of Twi and Ga are not: "It was black and shiny, but when the tall red policeman stepped closer it was wansima, about apem apem thousands." This in itself sets the book apart, and yet it is a revolu­tionary publication on other levels, too. Parkes has insisted on the use of phonetic script to capture the sounds of Ghanaian English—kєtє, sєbi, Asєm bєn ni!—and interestingly offers no key or glossary for the non-Ghanaian reader. In terms of con­tent, the book marks a moment in time when the postcolonial novel is leaving the stage; there is no "apolo­gy" in this narrative, nor is there any great sense of problematic opposites. Things in this book are very much "as they are."

Set in the hinterland of Ghana, the protagonist, Kayo, is "persuad­ed" by the Ghanaian police force to leave his comfortable forensic labo­ratory job in Accra to investigate a "whodunnit" in a village of twelve families somewhere in the Ghanaian jungle. The investigation, however, becomes increasingly complex, and Kayo's discussions with Opanyin Poku and Oduro, residents of the village, are told through a web of story and palm wine.

The story within the story explores the mysterious, employing Ghanaian proverbs and ancestral wisdom. In the narrative of Opanyin Poku, we read: "Ei, wonders will never cease. They say nothing is other than what you see, but it is also true that nothing is other than what you don't see."

It would be easy to state that the demonstrative differences of rural versus metropolis, East versus West, and rational versus ethereal are the basic tenets of this book, but that would be doing this publication an injustice. Tail of the Blue Bird reminds us that, although events may be rationalized, explained as "fate," or accepted as the unknown doings of ethereal forces, the universal fact remains that as humans, we all pass through them, live and endure them; whatever our cultural or philosophi­cal stance, we survive life's events to greater or lesser degrees.

Emma Dawson

Keele University

Workshop Freewrites [1]

It just occurred to me that I run dozens of workshops every year and I - as a rule - participate in the exercises that I use but rarely go back to them. Well, I've decided to share them: short summaries of the exercises, followed by my output - mostly terrible, but, I guess, they show what writing evolves from.

Exercise: The alphabet stop - I ask someone to say the alphabet in their head and another to stop them, whatever letter is the 'STOP' letter becomes the first letter of words contributed by everyone in the workshop. In this case, the letter was 'T' and the task was to use all the words that came up in two and a half minutes, which, I can assure you is both too little and too much. I don't think I need to mark out the 'T' words, but the aim of the exercise is to force the writer to manoeuvre around an odd selection of words and still deliver something close to a coherent narrative. The result is often odd, but often contains an exquisite seed of quirky brilliance that can form the basis of a more crafted piece of work. I first used this in 2003, partly inspired by an exercise used by fellow poet, Ainsley Burrows.

Output:
The temptation the tell the truth fades any time his vanity reigns triumphant; he wants to express his love, but it's torture for him to lose control and let her know. Tonight, like every other, ten out of ten thoughts are about her and his timidity, his tenacity to his independence, is stretching their togetherness taut as a trampoline; with every new trial she tolerates him less and with time he fears she'll see him as a thing that just came to steal her love today to boast about it tomorrow. He wants her to know it's not that way, but every time he tries to talk he tastes his fear and his treacherous pride traces the contours of his face into a tranquil expression that transfers none of his true thoughts to the tunnels of her tympanum.

Tonight, especially, he feels his foolishness tug at him, a tempestuous thing that trifles with him, transports his words away like a tsunami sweeper until he's standing in front of her - thirty years old, in trendy threads, fiddling with his dreads, trying to tell her he loves her, but sounding like a character from Toonami, like Taz, knowing she'll probably touch and go...

Stolen from Hip Hop

OK, so I'd been going into schools and, in trying to get my students, to apply critical minds to poetry, I'd taken in song lyrics, hip hop lyrics - you name it. But they kept making distinctions. So what I came up with, eventually, was a series of poems (one of which I have pasted below) which borrowed heavily from lyrics. I then asked them what they thought of these 'constructions' and they said, 'yeah, nice poems, but more intricate than lyrics.' Then I said, 'well most of the lines here are taken from or inspired by song lyrics so your homework is - guess who wrote what'. Now I'm sharing with you guys... The game here is - if you're a hip hop fan - to guess the origins of the lines in the poem and add them as a comment. To make it easier the lines are numbered - enjoy!

Miss H in the City
by Nii Ayikwei Parkes with props to the original lyricists who inspired the collage

I

1. I arrive in the city at dawn, just before sunrise, step
2. onto shore with hope bright in my eyes. This is
3. a new start; new dreams away from the hearts I broke;
4. excitement’s got my heart racing like a hummingbird
5. pacing. I try to be cool and patient, but it’s harder than
6. the calculus of quantum leaping. See I’m a small city
7. boy with big city dreams, I’ve dreamt of this existence
8. amidst the harbour lights; ships coming and going
9. like ghosts, dropping – like flies – new dreamers
10. who prayed for wings. Now I take it all in; its five
11. dimensions, its six senses. I feel the seven firmaments’
12. force and hold myself back from screaming. I sit
13. outside myself, observe from a bird’s eye view, a boy
14. descending into this fantastic beautiful mess. I wrestle
15. with words and heartbeats seeking the phrase to express
16. the moment, but the usual is no longer suitable. So
17. I rest my eyes on a purple bud bursting into a high-five
18. flower, its reflection shimmering on tranquil waters
19. like something greater than depth, something eternal.

II

1. And soon there is a girl; filled with magic
2. and strife and scaled just right. A smile
3. like a spear, on point and timed to perfection.
4. I lose myself in it, hear a distant bass ride
5. out like an ancient mating call. The duration’s
6. infinite – enough time for me to ponder sugar,
7. spice, and other things she might be made of.
8. I feel my flesh burn, my cell walls disintegrate
9. to allow me to absorb her essence. Her head is
10. wrapped but her aura peeks out at the back.
11. The big city’s first riddle and I have no answers.
12. It’s too loud to think; maybe my dreams are
13. larger than my hands can grasp. I realise now
14. the streets are too shrill to ever hear freedom
15. sing, too crammed for love to grow wings.
16. A new moon rides high in the metro’s fading
17. crown; across the way the ancient is manifest
18. in knife fights. I take a deep city breath, watch
19. my broken dreams fly to where waters fall
20. as she walks away – a devil in a blue dress,
21. a beast in a blue Chrysler, karma coming back
22. hard. My chest heaves against the evening’s
23. flesh. I sigh, watch the city lights throb
24. against a purple flower’s reflection, hope
25. that from this night a sweet dawn will come.

...waiting for the copy edits...

So, I'm learning that publishers run on that other time too. The date for my copy edits for Tail of The Blue Bird, has been pushed back twice, and it's very frustrating because I set time aside to go through the edits and get them back so that work can begin on the advance copies of the book. Now, some of you might be wondering what advance copies are or do exactly in publishing. In short they are the first blast of real excitement a writer gets after the book deal - essentially a finished version of your book, complete with a cover design and the final layout is printed almost a year in advance and sent out to the media, famous writers etc. etc. so that radios, newspapers and magazines can start scheduling you for interviews (if they think you/your work are interesting), writers can give you endorsements, and bookstores can make orders - all the things that trigger those quotes that appear on books that make everyone wonder - 'how come the book's only been out two days and they already have that printed on it?' In my case, the struggle to find a publisher because of the unusual (not my word) nature of the book means that luckily (or unluckily) I already have quotes from authors who endorsed the work so that potential publishers would realise that the book was considered good by my peers - I am proudest of my endorsements from Helon Habila, whose work I've been a long-time admirer of, and Courttia Newland, who was one of my early mentors in prose...

Anyway, back to the delay on my copy edits, very frustrating etc etc, but I have been making good use of the time; last week I recorded an excerpt for a fairly new BBC World Service programme called The Forum, and took part in a panel discussion of some of the ideas in the book, and stuff like whether or not Islamic Law is ethical and whether Plato had the right ideas about erotic love in his 'Symposium'. It was supremely interesting (I'll let you know when THEY let me know when it will be broadcast), but the publicity department at my publishers said - oh, couldn't it have been next year? everyone would have forgotten by the time the book comes out! Ah, YE publishers of little faith; haven't you heard about gossip, the bush fire media, alata wire tap, abusua radio, or, for the wine drinkers, the grapevine...? [BTW I welcome comments from my West African readers for any more phrases that exist to describe gossip - it's funny how the mind goes blank sometimes...]

Bottom line is, I'm not completely bored. I even had occasion to celebrate the fact that one of the books I edited last year - 29 Ways to Drown by Niki Aguirre - made it to the longlist of the Frank O'Connor Short Story Prize and was reviewed in today's SUN newspaper (the UK crew will understand the significance of this - it has a circulation of 3 million and pictures of half naked women on Page 3 i.e. West-European-naked, just breasts, which is fully clothed at some of the markets I went to in Cape Coast - over here people get excited when a woman breast feeds in public - as my Naija crew would say, ah ah!)

On that half-clothed note, I bid you adieu, or rather au revoir...

what i'm reading/listening to

listening:
Smokey Robinson & D'Angelo - I have entire folders of their work on my laptop and I have them on loop - I'm in a chilled summer mood...

reading:
Rose by Li Young Lee (something to relax) and Land of our Birth by Ainsley Burrows (something I'm editing)

Poetry Review Comment/Poem

Those of you who know me will know I'm one of those poetechs/wiredwriters who is intermittently plugging in to technology - blame it on my two engineer brothers and (of course) my own background in physics/biochemistry/microbiology and the rarely-confessed four hours programming on my friend Ebow's ZX Spectrum when I got so fascinated by the things I could get the computer to do and record on tape - yes, tape! - that I got home late and got my arse acquainted with a lost branch from some random water-starved tree in Accra. Anyway, that's a long roundabout way of saying I put my name in a google alert and got this little nugget from a blog about my poem in the Poetry Review:

"However, there is surprising news for today - I've just finished reading the latest "Poetry Review" magazine and it's the first time I've closed the final pages and haven't wondered what on earth all the fuss was about. Not a bad edition really - an undercurrent of pretention here and there of course, but at that level you probably have to expect it. There were some poems I even enjoyed (Good God, Carruthers, pass me the smellings salts: the words "enjoy" and "Poetry Review" have never been in the same paragraph before). I will even go so far as to say I noted some poets and their collections down on my buying list. Particular favourites were Siriol Troup for being charmingly Japanese about WH Auden (ah, the story is in the spaces, m'dear ...), Hugo Williams for being charmingly Victorian, Nii Ayikwei Parkes for putting the people back into politics, and Jane Draycott for a wonderful scene of miscommunication. Also nice to see my old favourite, Neil Rollinson, in there. Though they were rather snippety about his latest collection, Demolition. Hey, I didn't think it was that bad. Not vintage Rollinson for sure, but not terrible!" - the blog is Anne Brooke's Writing Journal

Putting 'the people back into politics' - I thought, yeah, that's probably an accurate description of what I try to do, but whether or not I'm successful is always up to the reader - it's just good to know that occasionally people feel what I'm trying to say - on that note, here's an excerpt from the poem for those of you who haven't had the chance to pick up the review (On Pleasure):

Lebanon was in a shade of peace – stilled
from war – and regardless of what anyone said
about you, I had never heard a name so

beautiful; Sajeeda. Late afternoon, we held

hands by the gutter as we walked to our
secret haunt. Above the graveyard of cars,
our seven year old bodies twisted into

the rust and glass cage of a Nissan Sunny –
forsaken. Nested, we didn’t consider the odds
of dropping like dislodged eggs. In that

strange skyscraper of scrap – a monument
to your mechanic father’s failures, the precise
shape of the green tree in his flag – we

solemnly undressed, as one. We embraced

More information on the issue here

and that's it for today :)

Little Pleasures

I haven't blogged in a while, I haven't listened to NEW music in a while, I haven't invented a new recipe in a while - it's been that kind of year. I spent most of January and February in my editorial role for flipped eye publishing editing work for three of my favourite poets - Ainsley Burrows, Agnes Meadows, Charlotte Ansell - and ended the month of February with a celebration event called reaching the 10000, marking a slaes landmark for flipped eye.

But before the end of Feb I went to see Junot Diaz at the Royal Festival Hall and got my copy of the brilliant The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao signed. The book has now joined others on my shelf and it just hit me that about 20-30% of the books I've bought/received in the last year have been signed. Is this the real pleasure of being a writer - that you know/meet so many writers that you get a good chunk of your books signed - and free, even? I don't think so - what I get from those books, really, is inspriration, because I only get books signed by authors I admire - every one of those books is a reminder, a klaxon, a broken record stuck on the word write, write, write, write....

[Oh, started a new notepad for my teaching stuff...]

what's with the dollar bill?

So, I visited a workshop and the students were asked to find a photograph and write something in the style of Lloyd Schwartz's (great critic) Tom Joanides: Which of these statements is true? Being a writer, I could only get my hands on a dollar bill - George Washington - and this is what came out:

Georgie, what's the deal really?

(a) I don't like smiling (b) I'm not smiling because I'm sitting
on hot coals (c) My mother styled my hair after a wave
that nearly drowned her (d) My mirror broke and I needed my friend
to etch me so I could see myself (e) I designed my own clothes using curtains
(f) I love fashion; my favourite colours are black and green (g) I'm a highlander;
there can be only one me (h) I'm a tender person, but don't be misled -
I'll break your back (i) I'm an illegal immigrant with private and public
debts (j) I slept with Faulkner (k) I'm so powerful they named a city
after me (l) Rappers yank my chain (m) Don't let the print fool you;
I'm Black (n) You can wake up now.

OK, you all have a good day now. I will be back to normal (whatever that is!) blogging duties soon :)

what i'm reading/listening to

listening:

Just got myself a little mp3 player and I'm listening to a post-supper mix of Marvin Gaye, Amel Larrieux, Van Hunt and Amy Winehouse. For lunch I had B.B. King and Jimi Hendrix; The Thrill was definitely in the Red House :)

reading:

Recently finished Andrei Makine's "The Woman Who Waited", which was good, but I'm in writing mode now - commercial - I have to finish some articles I've been asked to write.

he what? he stinks?

This has got to be a cool moment - my writing buddy, Niki Aguirre, who blogs on the virtual onion has gone and shown what's beneath my feathers by 'nomination' me for the thinking blogger award. Now I'm not saying I don't think, but I stink at reading blogs. I read a few to amuse myself, but to nominate five that make me think, when Niki has already stolen almost all the blogs I read is criminal. Anyway, I will try....

1. For general thought and 'dopeness' - Koranteng's Toli
2. For diverse musical stimulation - DJ Durutti
3. For book-type thinking & tidbits - Ready Steady Book, Editor's blog
4. For writer's perspective book stuff - Laila Lalami
5. and when he's not too busy tipping points - Malcolm Gladwell

I guess I have to go and let some of these people know I've marked them for life. Oh no! Shea it ain't so (more on this Shea stuff in my next blog!)

what i'm reading/listening to

I'm reading London Book Fair gossip, hoping to find that my novel has been sold, and I'm listening to Don Cherry's Symphony for Improvisors (read a review)

the california season

It seems like I've carried a bit of the rain with me to California. It's rained twice; quite heavily yesterday in the tropical style - violent and brief. I'm teaching/in residence in the English Department of the California State University in LA, but the Department is housed in the Engineering and Technology building. As soon as I got to it I felt at home - the story of my life; an engineer/scientist turned writer. Anyway, it's been good so far: I've been in one editorial meeting for sentence, the in-house literature magazine, the introductory class for creative non-fiction and I've had a couple of one-on-ones with students - more on the way today. I haven't had a bad time with writing; I think I'm being fairly productive - my aim is to get the beginnings of a definitive poetry collection done before I leave the US, so I'm doing it a day at a time. Yesterday, I settled on a concept for grouping my poems so now I'm going to group them, edit and weed out the crap, then send a rough draft out to my agent. In the meantime, in between times :) I've been writing a couple of haiku. These three celebrate nightfall in cali and the fact that I've seen no energy saving bulbs around...

#1
rare as brown flowers
fluorescent bulbs crouch in packs
the earth flames at night

#2
homicidal lights
fret like insomniac starlings
warning signs in neon

#3
leaves fade, bulbs burn slow
lights gleam like knives in alleys
the world mugged by night

what i'm reading/listening to

listening:
Jimi Hendrix on my laptop

reading:
Other people's poems - editing really....

what's in a name?

My environmentally soft heart often leads me to recycled aisles, but I like to feel like I am not being treated like a recycled thing. So, last week I went to re-stock on toilet paper and found that Tesco had redesigned the pack; it now read ‘TESCO recycled toilet tissue.” I didn’t pay it much attention until I was sitting in that thinking position then I started toying with the possibility that they mean tissue made from recycled toilet – of course, I know I’m being silly, but language is such an abstract thing isn’t it? Lends itself to loading with images, meanings, attitudes... right? Precisely the point of this post…

I swear, I am of a peaceful demeanour 98% of my life; it is the oddest things that get me going – I can get apoplectic in 2 seconds flat sometimes. One of those odd things is the marketing of books – especially books about the supposed ‘other’ (that means anyone who didn’t invent the idea of races or the English language) – and I’m not just talking about those silly typefaces that have come to symbolise different peoples although my Ghanaian blog-brother deals with it in some fine detail on his post Types and Faces, I speak of entire ideas and book blurbs that toy with the very notion of justice in the quest to perpetuate the idea of the roving hero (read WMOMS - white [english, french, spanish, portugese, danish, dutch - important detail; apart from queen vic I have no beef with english women, and I certainly didn't see any Lithuanian's trying to steal my diamonds in 18**] man on a mission somewhere). I usually ignore these things; I have become thick-skinned with the years BUT I saw the cover for Allan Mallinson's Company of Spears and I had a hard time stopping myself from tearing all the copies in Waterstone's to shreds. I admit I haven't read the book, and I am told that Mr Mallinson handles the battle prose as battle prose, no prejudices, BUT the cover's tag line is 'on the plains of South Africa Matthew Hervey [the hero] confronts the savage Zulu' - I mean, wait a minute! One party gathers men, gets on a ship, travels halfway across the world to pick a fight, and it's the person who is protecting his homeland who is labelled 'savage'? Yes, we all know that the Zulu were/are renowned warriors, but can't they just be brave? Why is it that South American, Native American and African warriors are always immortalised in writing as fierce, savage and brutal? Who is it that invented concentration camps against the Boer and African populations in South Africa (let's not even get into how that affected the psyche of the Boer and indirectly perpetuated apartheid)? Who is it that decimated native Central & South American populations in the bid to convert them to Catholicism? Who is it that considered castration and the removal of eyes as legitimate forms of interrogation against the Mau Mau in Kenya? I could go on... but I'm not asking for a revolution, I'm asking for these things not to be accepted as norms anymore - otherwise, who are we to turn around and complain that cultures can't co-exist? The truth is, the twin constructs of borders and race have always bothered me, but that is a huge battle that must be fought in stages. For now, I don't think it's too much to ask that we start by fixing our language use.

In nicer, warmer anecdote on the appropriation of words/names, Ike Turner (who I mentioned in a previous post after he won a Grammy) apparently has a song on his album having a dig at Tina. He renamed Eddie Boyd's Five Long Years as 18 Long Years (which is how long he was married to Tina) and dropped the beautiful line 'I've worked 18 long years for one woman/And she had the nerve to kick me out ... and do a movie.' (full story here)

That's my fustian done!

what i'm reading/listening to

listening:
Shame & a Sin - by Robert Cray

Robert is a bluesman's bluesman. His lyrics are IT and his guitar playing is incredible. I was lucky to see him at the Jazz Cafe in London last year and was struck by the odd fact that his face shows more emotion when he's strumming than when he's singing. But, man, that voice! He could look as stone-faced as a Trafalgar Square lion and you'd still feel the emotion. My favourite album of his is actually Sweet Potato Pie (cover on the right) for the songs Nothing Against You, Do That For Me, The One in the Middle and Little Birds.

reading:
Turner by David Dabydeen & A Wedding in Hell by Charles Simic

After close to a year of self-imposed novexile, it is with a rare animal-like pleasure that I have turned back to poetry, devouring line-breaks like Kit Kats. I am also aware that soon I will be in the San Gabriel Valley in California as writer-in-residence running poetry workshops - I have to come correct :)

my uncle said...

"I nurse a beard, as rebel young men do
And I love to sit and watch its bohemian growth
Each hair a sonorous protest."

Francis Ernest Kobina Parkes (1932 - 2005) aka Uncle Frank
Ghanaian poet, journalist, and editor

I couldn't agree more - I do the same with my hair :), and lately I've been pulling it and playing it like guitar strings 'cos I have too much to do and I'm broke. Another rejection slip came in the post, as well as a cheque for something I sent out at the same time. Amazing isn't it? That the universe gives us balanced balance sheets sometimes? Anyway, here comes that hunger again...

the writer returns

So, lately I've been feeling like a writer proper. Partly because some Ghanaians - as you probably gathered from my earlier post - can be quite judgmental when it comes to appearance but every time I say I'm a writer, they go - oh, it's OK; that's why you've got locks! Yes, it appears writers can be forgiven for everything here because it's not a 'proper' job. My next dastardly deed is to try to rob a bank and see if I'll be forgiven :)

Update:
The good news is confirmed; I got a distinction in my MA and came top of the class, for which I am to be awarded - wait for this... no, really, wait... 50 POUNDS! I mean, I'm not going to refuse it, but PLEASE! Have you any idea what that course costs? 6400 POUNDS... At least give me 10% back, or, yeah I know it's asking a lot... refund my fees or something. I could really use that money!! Even my first degree, which I finished in 1998 awarded me £180 for coming top of the class - and that was in Manchester (lower cost of living and all that). Anyway, still, I met my favourite writing group there so ha hum I'll be mum... I'm still going to start a campaign for the next person who wins that award - it's 'disgracefulish'

On my more academic side, I have just completed a paper on linguistic diversity in Ghana, focusing on the influence of the media and the idea of national identity so I'll let you know when that is out. I went researching at the Balme Library in the University of Ghana in Legon and also at the George Padmore Library in Accra - those libraries have some choice material but they need help! No anti-theft barriers NOTHING. At George Padmore, the collection has reduced to a point where I am planning to mount a campaign for people to donate books to them... It's serious!

On my creative side, I FINALLY GOT A SHORT STORY IN A NORTH AMERICAN MAGAZINE :) Storyteller Magazine (Canada - http://www.storytellermagazine.com/) will carry the latest (and final) version of my story 'Scotch Bonnets' in their Winter issue. I'm ecstatic of course... but I have to stay focused; I'm deep inside my novel...

Got to go..

I'm not reading anything for the next week or so - just writing

headlines from Ghana

Long time no blog, but those-in-the-know know that I've been podcasting. It turns out it's a lot easier, especially if you go completely 'ghetto' like I do: I just use my phone voice recorder, then I plug it into my laptop and download it and there's your mp3 podcast... it only takes a minute to update the xml file for iTunes etc, so it's essentially pain-free. OK I'm not saying blogs are a pain, but it takes time to type and I certainly can't type as fast as I talk! So, the update, I'm in Ghana, trying my best not to miss my grlfriend too much, keep up with my work schedule and fulfill the social duties that come with being amongst family!! In that time I've written one short story, the outline for an article on the evolution of languages in Ghana (which I'm doing for a publication on linguistic diversity in Africa), a couple of poems, and a few pages of my novel in progess. I've also done some research for the novel and I'm hoping to do a lot more in the next couple of weeks. My writer's group in London are keeping me disciplined because I'm still feeding back on stories online using a great program called Celtx and I've had some pretty good news; it's now confirmed that the first chapter of my novel-in-progress 'Afterbirth' is going to be published in the new British Council anthology - New Writing 15 - due out mid-next-year. Meanwhile the anthology that I'm editing with Tash Aw (originally due out in November) is on schedule to be released in January - you can pre-order it online (search x24: unclassified). Oh, and I passed my MA Creative Writing course, in fact I'm told I got a distinction but I haven't seen the stuff myself yet so I won't start drinking just yet!

It's Tuesday and I wasn't planning on going to the internet cafe today but it seems I'll have to because of some bills I thought I'd sorted back in the cold that I haven't. On Wednesday, I'm told there's a cool jazz place that's come up in Accra called Jazz Tone so I might go and see what's cooking there. I'm always excited when I find out about a new stage-venue in Accra; I grew out of night clubs like eight years ago so it's no fun for me otherwise. It's funny, I say I grew out of night clubs, but I think it's more a case of the people I would go out with, like my older brother and a crew of my 'boys', are all late-working professionals and Dads now and I'd much rather be writing than out getting smoked up but I bet if we all got together the dance moves would all come out to play again :)

Speaking of which, I'm loving being an uncle to all these strange, beautiful kids who I probably won't see for another year and will have to get to know all over again. They are a great distraction from the politics going on around - our president who has the oratorial skill of a snail, presidential candidate asprirants in the opposition who have forgotten that they are friends, 'load-scheduling' of electricity (basically we have to accept that our lights will be off once every five days), our currency being redenominated so that I will no longer be a millionaire :). See unlike politicians, these kids state their goals clearly - TO CAUSE HAVOC - so at least you know what you're dealing with; the politician state that they are here - TO SOLVE PROBLEMS, and do exactly what the kids do. I'll take kid'sSHIT over bullSHIT any day...

Otherwise I'm out here getting darker and taking the opportunity to send out some work for publication. For those of you who subscribe to short stories and poems on my mailing list, I will be sending them out this week so look out for them, if you don't subscribe and are interested, go the the website and select the appropriate mailing list to join. I send the stories out quarterly and the poems monthly.

I'm reading: some Anais Nin anthology, the title evades me at this moment!

hard work

In the last few weeks I've realised just how hard it is to keep a blog regular and up to date. Indeed it's been easier to keep my podcast going, and it's just occured to me that the podcast is so much more focused - I turn on the microphone and I have a clear goal; to read one poem. This blog on the other hand is freestyle and because I'm a broody kind of fellow (yes, to the tune of 'stubborn kind of fellow') it's hard for me to sit and write - I do so much in my head and when my head is heavy with thoughts, worries, responsibilities etc. etc. it's hard for me to put anything out in a blog. Emotionally, I haven't been on even keel for a long time. Juggling all the things I have to do to keep afloat as a writer I go through highs and lows like a newborn through diapers. Black History Month UK ^TM has just come to an end and given my life back to me, but here's a diary of occurences:

HIGH: The Barbican hosts a book launch for a poetry imprint I started a year ago ( AMAZON UK Link | AMAZON US Link)
LOW: BUT Printer goes out of business and I'm not sure if we'll have books on the launch night: I lose FIVE days of writing to sort this out and eventually we get the books - the launch was fine but, man I will NEVER get those five days back!

LOW: Tash Aw and I are distressed by the stories we have received for the anthology we're editing together - good stories are too similar; other stories are too bad! It's clear we'll have to put the launch date back.
HIGH: We send a distress message out and get a few more stories - we think we're OK... fingers crossed

HIGH: I get some Arts Council Funding to work on my second novel; it's meant to kick in in late October so I can stop doing gigs and concentrate on writing
LOW: I'm still waiting for the money :) - it will come, I know, but I'm still on gig street - my next is at the Folkestone Literature Festival on November 16; if you live in Kent, do come and check us out... oh, and buy some books - I've got to eat!

HIGH: One of my best friends, a pilot, is passing through from Switzerland, in the same week my girlfriend gets a great job (I forsee loads of free lunches and dinners!). I'm supposed to be able to see them both...
LOW: Yep, you guessed it... In spite of hours of phone coordination, I see neither :)

LOW: My account reaches the low point of £24.09 balance
LOW: All my bills arrive on November 1
LOW: Paying my rent takes my current account into the red; I have savings but people owe me money for gigs - it's the principle; I'm NOT transferring money from my savings!

HIGH: I manage to conduct 4 (FOUR) editorial meetings with my writers in one week - that's a record even for me!
LOW: I didn't get to see my girlfriend again! Not a good time to mess around, now she's all MINTED and I'm an ARTIST!

HIGH: I get e-mails from St Petersburg, Vancouver and Dayton. People are actually listening to my podcast!! Here's all the links to new outlets:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/flippedeye/MoQq | http://odeo.com/channel/142141/view | My Odeo Channel | http://www.podcastpup.com/pod.asp?ID=1914
HIGH: I finally send some short stories off to the New Yorker and The Paris Review, with another ready to go to the London Magazine and one coming up for Wasafiri - I don't know what will come of them, but I haven't made a submission in close to two years so it's a huge deal for me.

LOW: It's cold as hell. Winter is my least productive period in the UK 'cos I just can't talk myself out of bed... Hmmm...


So there you have it. A little summary of the Life of I. It's not all work and doom though. I have found some great video podcasts of cartoons and since cartoons have been an obsession since I was three years old, I've had some good times... I also got nostalgic about the Ghanaian football team who will be playing Australia at Loftus Road on November 15 and (seeing as we've had problems mainly with strikers) spent some time checking out one of our great stikers online:

Tony Yeboah spent most of his playing career in Germany and averaged better than a goal every other game. I found some cool vids of a couple of his games on what I now call Goo Tube. Nothing from the better part of his career at Frankfurt though. Here's my lil summary:

Tony Yeboah:
62 appearances – 33 goals for Leeds
123 appearances – 68 goals for Frankfurt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBx_c8Y0r0c – Incredible goal for Leeds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYZo6fjQacs&NR – Hat Trick against Monaco

What I'm listening to? Luther Vandross' new best of... I love Luther like my own brother!
I'm reading Wallace Stevens (Poetry) and about to get into Fatou Diome (Fiction) translated from French by a friend I made at a translation conference - in case you missed it, I write in Ga as well, that's why I was there - in Cambridge; Roz Schwartz.

trapped

Anyone remember that Colonel Abrams song? (I keep showing my age up in this web!)... "Oh oh I`m trapped like a fool I`m in a cage."; that's me right now. Of course I'm ecstatic that I just handed in my dissertation for my Masters and I was really looking forward to some "downtime" but ALAS here comes October. It's Black History Month in the UK, I'm a Ghanaian writer (of, dark, very dark complexion Mr Soyinka...) and I can't afford to refuse the the system its opportunity to employ me and PAY ME 'cos I have bills waiting. So... I find myself working on things I would have loved to work on in another month of the year, and no time for ME and my dreaming at all! Regardless, I'm doing sleepless nights reading and I'm carrying on with my novel so if you see me and my eyes are red and I'm not making sense, just know that I'm trying to survive in a country that only wants me to exist for a month :)

where in the world...

...is Carmen Sandiego? OK, don't tell me I'm the only one who played that game; it was probably the first (and only) video game I played [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Sandiego ] - Anyway, I feel like her right now because I haven't had a moment in one spot for ages. I'll be back though. The good thing about moving about it that it gives you great ideas for writing and loads of useful useless info. For example, I was 'punting' in Cambridge and the boat/barge/punt builder told me there was no fish in the water for years 'cos it was so polluted (the fish are jumping like summertime again, thanks to an EU grant to clean it up), and it makes you wonder - what exactly were those Cambridge kids doing to pollute the water so much?? Just kidding, it was industrial waste - or was it?

Next big event:
Bringing the House Down www.myspace.com/bringingthehousedown

Listening to:
Hugh Masekela

mint

So, maybe we should get all the lit news out of the way then get to the mint? Well, as you gathered from my last offering I've been in NYC writing and stuff. I returned to the UK to a backlog of e-mail and all that lovely sour mash. The manuscript for my first novel has been doing the rounds and it hasn't found a home yet. I've had two lovely rejections from editors who had very different opinons of my work; one thought it didn't have a strong enough narrative thread, but loved my writing, the other thought the plot and story were fascinating and original but didn't like the language, which was described as 'solemn and brooding'. In any case, both editors were very nice about it and I'm glad for that because I respect them both BUT it leaves a writer thinking WHO'S RIGHT?? This is when you have to trust your own instincts. I mean how many books have we seen turned down that then became mega-sellers; my own agent turned down a manuscript that is now on the Booker longlist. Man, it's a beautiful world!! I do have good news though: a major excerpt from my second novel (in progess) is to be published in the British Council's New Writing anthology next year, and I'm on the verge of becoming a published children's writer - ha! No money, no problems...

Now, the mint. Basically fresh mint was on sale at Tesco so I bought a bunch. I put half up to dry to make tea with later, but I still have the rest of the fresh mint. Yesterday I made six mint teas - lovely! Then today I thought, let's make some interesting food. I had some left over tuna, some spring onions, parmesan cheese, a bit of lamb mince, a last thin slice of brown bread, a bit of double cream, and stuff. And then I spotted the large green pepper - so I thought pepper stuffing tuna/lamb competition. For the lamb the mix was lamb/chilli powder/double cream/half slice of brown bread (crumbed)/mint leaves (ha, ha, ha)/spring onions/salt&pepper and for the tuna it was tuna/mustard/half slice of brown bread (crumbed)/mint leaves (ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha)/spring onions/salt&pepper/plus parmesan topping. In the end I had excess stuffing so (influenced by the recent visit of the mother of a Libyan friend of mine whose mom is the most amazing cook!) I dragged some left over rice from the fridge and made rice-stuffing parcels to go in the oven with the stuffed peppers. While they were in there I made a double cream/mustard & mint (ha, ha, ha, ha, ha...) sauce and would you believe???? It was SOOOO FREAKING GOOD - and to my great surprise the tuna (from Ghana of course - all the big cans of Tesco tuna are from Ghana - dolphin friendly and all!) actually won the taste wars. Don't get me wrong, the lamb was good... but the tuna was poetry!! The rice parcels were yummy too with that crazy sauce. Another mad recipe for the book!! BTW if you want to try this stuff, the key to any mint sauce is to keep tasting because, trust me, you don't want to get too minted! Mo' money mo' problems!!

I'm listening to Stephanie Mills 'cos she has one of the best voices ever - none of this cheap trilling stuff we get fed these days. My girlfriend always laughs when I sing along to "Comfort of a Man" but it's worth it just to sing along to such dopeness...

what i'm reading/listening to

listening:
Stephanie Mills