Re:configuration

It's been a while since I blogged and I don't think I will properly for a few weeks yet - way, way too busy! But I recently had a poem Re:configuration published in the PEN International Magazine (the issue is on shelves now and most of it can be seen online at: http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/go/pen-international-magazine), which I'd like to share part of as a post. I'm particularly happy the poem got published for two reasons

1. It's one of my favourites,
   
2. It's one of my more experimental ones.

So, I'm sharing what I call it's second movement, but don't just read - please, let me know what you think...

II

The story is simple; my father went

with a cancerous light, chasing Swedru

in the shadow of his fat/her for answers

to questions he divined I would ask

forgetting that project/ions dance, shift

like rhythms. In a hot panic he left

before night could come to hurry him

along with songs. My mother bears the scars

but only a fraction of the answers; for

how was she to know she would be the one

I clawed at for maps of my existence – one

in a role meant for absent sound/and/light?

So I am left with darkness; the high

window through which imagination creeps,

the room I at/tempt to enter to evoke

more than fading echoes of footsteps that

haunt me. I am a slave to the hard hold

unable to yield chance to the light/less

of grip that all moments employ for

the velo/city of sand’s passing. Maybe I am

slowly learning that with each green breath

I blow my life away. Rushed, all I want

is for my father to explain what I mean

to my name, how I be/came configured

as Parkes when I don’t harbour its phantom

rhythm beneath my tongue.

I have lost

my way again: did I not hear the tri/angle

and the gankogui tinkling responses into

the vacuum of the drum’s silence? My

father is rest/less again. Please tell him

to open his window for my tear/full chants

have left me hoarse – and my siblings

the thieves too; who took his skin, spirit

and mind, leaving me captive in his body.

We confess our parents never truly told us

their names, we over/heard others calling

them Auntie and Uncle, Mr and Mrs so and so

so we did the same. Did we err? Did I

trap my pa/rents by calling their red shadows

names meant for colours? All I know

is that I am at/tuned to brown like no other

shade, yet cold breath haloes frame me black.

...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)