A Short Biography of Yesterday

I had been wondering how to do the deed, ever since I first stumbled upon the title of Stephen Derwent Partington’s second poetry collection. Clever writers (and editors) will leave the answer until page 77 of an 80-page book to make sure you read it all, but cleverer readers like me will flip through (oh for an analogue google that sits behind the eyes!) until I find the cactus poem, Rains and Leaders.

Two failed rains can euthanise a cactus,
wring an aloe like a flannel to its
final drop. Read more »

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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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Maurice and The Right to Recall

Okay, so there I was on the other side of the street from the Nigerian Embassy in London. It was 5.30pm on Friday, 15th January, 2010 and our demonstration was just winding down when a few rather more nattily-dressed Nigerians began to arrive on the scene. ‘You are late for the demonstration,’ we told them.

‘We’re all together in the struggle,’ they replied, ‘but we have another demonstration inside the embassy.’ Read more »

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Good wishes were never going to be enough.

The token gesture, even the heart-felt, sacrificial donation… they were always going to be too little, too late, not for that disaster area an ocean away. Thanks to television, the world suffered with Haiti. But Haiti needed far more than tears. Enter America. Never was military might put to better use. Never did an American imperial presidency respond with greater heart and promptitude to the needs of needy humanity than in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake. As in the aftermath of the Asian Tsunami, it is not just the aircraft carriers, ambulance ships, thousands of soldiers or even the pledge of a hundred million dollars that makes the difference. It is also in the raw empathy and generosity of spirit from citizens on the streets (notwithstanding the ever-present lunatic fringe). Read more »

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Here’s the reason why… and  a notice from the organisers of a London Protest March… See you there.
Chuma.

Why Nigerians in London must defy all odds to attend the mass protest on Friday January 15, 2010

Nigeria is in perhaps the worst shape in its approximately fifty-year history. The country lurches from one dispiriting news to another, leaving its citizens close to despair. Recent policy decisions by the Barack Obama administration indicate that Nigeria is now perceived as a pariah state and haven of terror, its citizens regarded as potential terrorists. In the midst of such troubling developments, the members of Nigeria’s political and economic ruling class continue their pursuit of odious privileges and obscene accumulation of the nation’s resources. These unconscionable men and women conspire against the nation’s corporate interests and further impoverish the majority of citizens. 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.

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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

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