A Short Biography of Yesterday

Diana Quick's A Tug on the Thread

The most fascinating people in our lives are often our own ‘boring’ parents. Actress Diana Quick made this discovery only after her father died, back when she was still a student in Oxford University.

I met her back in 2008 during the programming of Oxford Playhouse’s  70^th Anniversary. Soon after that, I read her family memoir, A Tug on the Thread, which was in part inspired by her father’s death. She had thought she knew her old man well enough, but he had requested a full-blown Catholic requiem service and she’d had no idea that he had any Catholic roots. Writes Diana,

When  I really thought about his background I realised that all I knew for sure was that he had been born and raised in India and had come to England to be a student at Guy’s Hospital a few years before the Second World War. p.12 Read more »

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(Or Why you need to buy a Subscription of African Writing Magazine).

The most recent edition of The New Yorker contains an Uwem Akpan short story, Baptizing the Gun. It is a vintage Akpan page-turner (or mouse-clicker, for I read it online). In the first line of the story, a woman traveling in a Lagos bus has her ear ripped by an earring thief. As the Reverend narrator of Akpan’s story continues down Lagos’ streets, it does not get much safer for the city’s intrepid commuters. Hair raising stuff.

The Denzel Washington film, Man on Fire, is set in a Mexico City where the children of the rich stay home from school for want of a good bodyguard, where uniformed policemen are members of the kidnap gangs that make the streets the kidnap capital of the world. Denzel Washington plays the American hero who saves the daughter of the American wife of a Mexican tycoon, Samuel (played by American actor, Marc Antony) by shooting and blowing up half the city. It is a 2004 film but I saw it yesterday. Hair raising stuff. Read more »

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(Or How to Hook the Naija Mugu)

A black notebook is discovered in a loo, 20,000 feet above Abuja. It contains political secrets so ‘explosive’ that its owner has to deny it. Here’s the first of ten recently discovered commandments designed for the aspiring politician.

The full PDF is available here and you would be mad not to read it all…

then again, reading it might just drive you mad, or worse… decisions, decisions… anyhow, here’s the first of ten commandment. Read more »

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http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/Interview-with-Ngugi-Wa-Thiongo

The current  issue of Granta magazine features an interview with Ngugi Wa Thiongo.

Ellah Allfrey takes the African-language-warrior through his forthcoming memoirs, Dreams in a Time of War. He talks about the phenomenon of the ‘concentration villages’ created by the dislocation of hundred of traditional villages by the colonists. Now, that’s a story I’d like to read. Read more »

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Here is the text of an open letter released by Nigerian Writers in reaction to the current political situation in Nigeria. Over forty writers have currently signed up to the letter which has this morning been released to the media. You can add your own signature, and support, in a comment box beneath.   You can also listen to and download an audio version by clicking on this link:  Audio

We are no Longer at Ease.

An Open Letter from Nigerian Writers

Nigeria’s failure to make the progress commensurate with 50 years of nation-building is not just a failure of leadership. It is first and most catastrophically, a failure of followership.

As ordinary Nigerians, we have failed to create an environment where good leadership can thrive. By glamorising fraud and ineptitude, we have created a country hostile to probity. Our expectation from Government House is mediocrity, so that good government surprises us pleasantly and excellence continues to amaze us. Instead of an environment of accountability, we have fostered sycophancy. We have been content to follow every stripe of leader, from the thief to the buffoon. The consequence is that for months we have been happy to be ruled even in absentia.

Today, we say, no more.

Read more »

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Prayer before Flight

(after Louis MacNeice)

I’m about to fly, so help me.

May the heaven-bound youth with a
lust for virgins miss my flight.
when the prodding wand comes my way
let it beep briefly, and be
gone

Read more »

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Lionel Shriver, Exchange Rates.

Hitting Trees with Sticks is the title of one of the contenders for the BBC Short Story competition. It is one of five finalists. The winner should be announced by Monday 7th December (listen to podcasts here ). The title, ‘hitting trees with sticks’ comes together with the first and last paragraphs in a circularity that is one of the great techniques of the form.

How can the novel compete? Within the duration of a thirty-minute drive, Jane Rogers takes you, with empathy, into Alzheimer territory. (And when the story’s done, you’ll never leave again.) An elderly woman is losing her mind and she knows it; she putters round  and around her home in an ever-shrinking circle of memory. The story ends as it begins, with a little girl whacking a tree, only this time, we are mentally whacking that tree with her as well. Good stuff. Read more »

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Yesterday brought me new insight: war is NOT sexy.

Insight being a YouTube software that gives the uploader of a video interesting statistics about his viewership. One of the stats I found, on the third day after uploading the video of my poem, Sudan. Sudan., is the Hot Spots Chart. I’ll set it out, before explaining further:

YouTube Hot Spots Chart Read more »

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Okay, so I am a late adopter of technology, but I am getting there.

For my first YouTube video, I went back to the first poem I blogged here, Sudan. Sudan. (rendered without exclamations!) and blended in music and photographs. The photographs were mostly taken with my Canon 350D (which got me into a spot of bother with Sudan’s secret police, but that’s another story). But there are two exceptions: one photograph by Slovenian traveller, Tomo Kriznar, and another – of me – by… sorry I didn’t get his name. He was my Khartoum taxi-driver, I posed by a tree and he was kind enough to press the shutter. Nice shot by the way. Photography is easy. Especially with a point-and-shoot like a 350D set to easy-everything. Good thing I didn’t travel with the Mamiya RB67. Back to that YouTube thing:

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Yesterday, I enjoyed an elemental theatre experience on a cinema screen…

It was a National Theatre offering of the 17th century play, Phèdre, but I was nowhere near the National Theatre in London. I was in Guernsey’s Performing Arts Theatre, part of a new experiment in British theatre that saw the Helen Mirren-led cast play to an audience spread over 70 cinemas across the UK and 200 more across the rest of the world, including the US and Australia. Read more »

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