Happy New Year + 2 podcasts.

Happy New Year folks! Welcome to the second week of 2016. I hope it has started calmly and fruitfully for you. I, personally, am still in holiday mode and wish to stay there for a good few more weeks. Perhaps months. Alas, try as I might, my Nigerian juju no get power reach - there are limits to my black-boy-magic and stopping time exceeds me.

On the subject of time-travel, I'd like to begin this year by taking you back to last year. I was interviewed for two different podcasts where I got to talk about art, poetry, politics, travel and The Midnight Run. 

The first was the inaugural episode for Diasporaphiles - a blog/meeting-place, discovering the common ground between people who feel in place out of place. (35:36min). 

As an artist who works across genre and forms, Inua Ellams is fascinated by movement. A poet, playwright, performer and graphic artist, he is used to inhabiting different worlds. In this conversation Inua takes us on a tour of his imagination. Exploring his views on art and migration, tales of his travels through Africa’s barbershops, and his journey into the hidden corners of the city, we try to find the roots of his restless creativity.

The second was in conversation with the incredible write and urban traveller, Iain Sinclair, for the British council before our trip to Mexico last year.

Check out all the other podcasts in the 'Writers in Conversation' series: soundcloud.com/britishcouncil/sets/writers-in-conversation Find out more on our literature site: http://literature.britishcouncil.org/

Hope you find some time to spend listening. Any questions you have, please do not hesitate to ask. Enjoy!

Inua

The Same City

The Same City

by Terrance Hayes
For James L. Hayes
 

The rain falling on a night
in mid-December, 
I pull to my father’s engine
wondering how long I’ll remember
this. His car is dead. He connects
jumper cables to his battery, 
then to mine without looking in
at me and the child. Water beads
on the windshields, the road sign, 
his thin blue coat. I’d get out now, 
prove I can stand with him
in the cold, but he told me to stay
with the infant. I wrap her
in the blanket, staring
for what seems like a long time
into her open, toothless mouth, 
and wish she was mine. I feed her
an orange softened first in my mouth, 
chewed gently until the juice runs
down my fingers as I squeeze it
into hers. What could any of this matter
to another man passing on his way
to his family, his radio deafening
the sound of water and breathing
along all the roads bound to his? 
But to rescue a soul is as close
as anyone comes to God. 
Think of Noah lifting a small black bird
from its nest. Think of Joseph, 
raising a son that wasn’t his. 

Let me begin again. 
I want to be holy. In rain
I pull to my father’s car
with my girlfriend’s infant. 
She was eight weeks pregnant when we met. 
But we’d make love. We’d make
love below stars and shingles
while her baby kicked between us. 
Perhaps a man whose young child
bears his face, whose wife waits
as he drives home through rain
& darkness, perhaps that man
would call me a fool. So what. 
There is one thing I will remember
all my life. It is as small
& holy as the mouth
of an infant. It is speechless. 
When his car would not stir, 
my father climbed in beside us, 
took the orange from my hand, 
took the baby in his arms. 
In 1974, this man met my mother
for the first time as I cried or slept
in the same city that holds us
tonight. If you ever tell my story, 
say that’s the year I was born.
 

A reading of this incredible poem by Terrance Hayes. http://drheidih.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/terrance-hayes.html

The Gift.

The Spalding Suite show is over. A thank you to those who saw it. For those who didn't, it may tour again... hopefully with some changes and improvements. Before then I'm gonna start work on an even bigger basketball story and wanted to share with y'all one poem that didn't make it into Spalding Suite. Hope you like it:

The Gift
After Roger Robinson

When I had taken half the court
and left the lone-star-glory lurching
to pass you the ball, the lane clear 
for an easy layup, you slouched out
a lazy three and laughed, sheepish 
as the leather bounced out of play.
Had I described my years of sweat,
of swollen knees, hung breath rising 
towards the moon of my backyard basket
the dust-scuffing-doggedness of faking
against one's shadow to aim and fade -
away, listening for the net’s swish 
the ball flanked by nothing but air,
barely audible against the clattering
trains and I, committing to memory 
the arch-up/ pull-back/ release, arch-up/
pull-back/ release, arch-up/ pull-back/ 
while, threatening this sacred of flows,
the staccato-fisted-selfishness of car horns
battering much like these trolls we fight, 
these winged giants who foul like ogres,
they’ve made a dancer of me (to best them 
I twirled, plied, split, risked team fouls 
and shot clock to pass you the ball)
had I detailed years of sacrifice, 
perhaps then you might have walked 
my gift safely down the lane, its smooth
skin to kiss the glass backboard 
and float into the hoop, even if 
you didn't want to.

Thanks for reading, here is a link to the full script.

It was all yellow.

I had a really fun photoshoot in Madrid a few days ago with the amazing guys at www.theartvalley.es. Here are a couple  taken just fooling around, will share them properly in the coming weeks. 

Why I'm giving up poetry for dance.

I'm not really. I couldn't even if I tried. I'm just making a piece with an old friend.

I met Tony Adigun about ten years ago somewhere in the deep of East London. I stepped off an open mic stage and he was there with compliments and questions and collaborations in mind. This was way before I ever called myself a writer and way before I knew the basics of graphic design. I was just a dude with a notepad and bootlegged photoshop, with things to say and sketch, looking for spaces and people to belong to.

Very quickly, I became the in-house graphic designer for Tony's dance company AVANT GARDE and grew to creating text for them and once in a blue while, taking part in performances, threatening that if he turned his back too long I's start dancing. I wrote for his productions: The Bunker Thing and Illegal Dance. I also wrote a libretto which Tony choreographed, which was performed at the Royal Opera House. I sometimes forget this happened... I reminded Tony yesterday and he went completely blank for a few seconds before saying... "Oh shit! Bruv, we did that!"

Tony is busy. I mean BUSY. I mean if his diary was sentient, it would have tried to make a run for it by now. I'm crazy at the best if times too... but over the years we have talked about ways of working together, just him and I on a stage. The Place and The BAC have worked together to make this happen under the expert hand of Christina Elliott who was my first project manager at Fuel and is now Tony's at The Place. 

I'm nervous and excited. Contemporary dance goes where language fails. It is concerned with communicating what the sounds of words mean to say... whereas poetry is the harsh blunt word; dance is the ghost and poetry is often the machine. Tony was born in England and speaks a Nigerian language. I was born in Nigeria and speak none. Tony is Yoruba and I am Hausa meaning historically, he is my mortal tribal enemy. Tony is stocky and muscular and I... well, my muscles mostly transport my brain from one room to another these days...

But we are creating something. For the first day of rehearsals, we talked and laughed and shook our heads and reminisced and dreamt came up with lists of things not to do, and parameters to guide what we will do. We have a first line and a title... I think it will be called 'On Any Given Night'.

Details here: 

http://www.theplace.org.uk/place-battersea-arts-centre-1?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=tony_vera&utm_campaign=bac

Come see me dance. 

Facts About Africa!

FACTS ABOUT AFRICA

1. The Gambia has only one university.

2. Equatorial Guinea is Africa’s only Spanish speaking country.

3. South Africa is the most visited African country.

4. Nigeria has the richest Black people in Africa.

5. Samuel Eto’o is the highest paid Footballer of all time, he received about £350,000 weekly in Russia in 2011.

6. A person from Botswana is called a Motswana, the plural is Batswana.

7. A person from Lesotho is called a Mosotho.

8. A person from Niger is called a Nigerien.

8. A person from Burkina Faso is called a Burkinabe.

9. Nigeria has won more football cups than England.

10. Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the world’s most educated President with 7 degrees, two of them are Masters.

11. Al-Ahly of Egypt is the richest club in Africa.

12. Didier Drogba is Chelsea’s highest goalscorer in European competition.

13. Johannesburg, South Africa is the most visited city in Africa.

14. Zinedine Zidane wanted to play for Àlgeria, but the selector rejected him, saying they are already many players like him in the team.

15. President Jacob Zuma was given a special award by Fifa for refereeing on Robben Island during his years as a political prisoner.

16. President Robert Mugabe was jailed for 11 years for fighting for freedom.

17. President Robert Mugabe is Africa’s oldest Head of State and the world’s second oldest Head of State. He was born in 1924.

18. The Seychelles are the most educated Africans. Seychelles’ literacy rates (Adult: 92%, Youth: 99%) Zimbabwe is 2nd (Adult: 91.2%,Youth: 99%).

19. Rwanda is a better country for gender equality than England and USA.

20. Somalia got its first ATM on October 7, 2014.

21. South Africa has the most Grammy award winners in Africa.

22. Ethiopia has the most airports in Africa.

23. Ethiopia’s economy is growing faster than China’s.

24. Eritrea’s President, Isaias Afwerki is the least richest President in Africa.

25. Ethiopia is Africa’s oldest independent country, it has existed for over 3,000 years without
being colonised.

26. Haile Selassie 1 was the 225th and last Emperor of Ethiopia.

27. Nigeria has the most monarchs in the world.

28. Angola has more Portuguese speakers than Portugal.

29. President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos has ruled Angola since 1979.

30. President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo is Africa’s longest serving Head of State. He has ruled Equatorial Guinea since August 3, 1979 when he overthrew his uncle, Francisco Nguema. His son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue is his Vice President and will succeed him if he
resigns. He started ruling Dos Santo

31. George Weah of Liberia is the first man to win World, European and African footballer of the year in the same year.

32. Swaziland is the only remaining absolute mornach in the world.

33. The Gambia is the smallest country in Africa followed by Swaziland.

34. King Sobhuza ll of Swaziland took the longest time in reigning Swaziland, 62 years as he was crowned in 1921 and died in August 1982 at the age of 83 years.

35.1. King Sobhuza II of swaziland, married 70 wives, who gave him 210 children between 1920 and 1970.

36. Zimbabwe is the only country in the world were almost everyone was a billionaire at one point

Love this short story.

There was a hungry man who had three oranges. He cut the first one open, saw it was bad and threw it away. He cut open the second, saw it was also bad and threw it away. He reached for third but stopped, got up to switch off the light, cut it open in the dark, and ate it.

Hiraeth

#WordPorn

St Luke

You know when you are sitting in the service and the pastor is describing how wrong it is for a man to marry a man and a woman to marry a woman, how against the Bible and nature it is, and you want to say our definition of "homosexuality" is present in about 90% of the other animals on the planet, are we so arrogant that we believe we are the sacred ones? the know-it alls? given we've existed for a fraction of a blink on Earth's timeline? Or you want to say that two of your closest friends are gay men and have both fled their homes because laws restricted and strangled the very happiness I enjoy, that religion is said to provide, and the pastor backs up his stance by reading from the book of Ruth, and before reading the passage, asks why it is that Ruth's book goes largely ignored given its wisdom and compassion and depth, and you want to say that it is part of the machine: the book has been edited by men and used to subjugate women, that female characters were entirely replaced by men to further a gender-unjust world, take any of the books, like the book of Luke... and you realise 'Luke' isn't his actual name, as he wasn't an English dude, so when we pray and invoke the saint, we are calling to a fictionalised character that points to a Greek name, that is representative of a man who died thousands of years ago, that prayers are words, are darts fired into the dark, into the edited recordings of a history largely unknown, that it requires faith, which is a belief in the unbelievable, which is gaseous and nothing and everything and nothing and everything so it doesn't really matter, really. 

But you want your friends to be happy.

For #Baga

Nigerian Pastoral
-After Gregory Djanikian.
#Afterhours

If Adamu were leaning against a wall
mouth flush with fresh coconut
when trucks screeched to a halt

and Adewunmi were writing her name 
in sand, dragging the small stick
when the magazine clicked

and Afoaka were hushing her twins
waving the straw fan back and forth
when the first shots rang out

if Aliyu barefoot by the oranges
were squeezing each fruit for ripeness
when the bullet shattered his cheek

if Akarachi refusing to run
were praying in his room
when the rocket struck the roof

and Azuba in her new hand-stitched hijab
were tucking away stray wisps
when the blast ate her skin

How long would it have to go on then
beginning with A and spilling over
into all the alphabets

before mother sister father child
could bear the same weight
in any faith, in any race,

be mourned with the same tongue.

Further reading: 
1) Why did the world ignore?
2) I walked for five days
3) How climate change is worsening the violence
4) Boko Haram were once peaceful
5) Captivity - Teju Cole

Bird-Inua-Man

Last year, I went to a writer's festival in NewZealand. I was hanging around with some writers who happened to be male and someone somewhere suggest Bungee jumping. I'm afraid of heights. Terrified of it. (This is why I haven't learnt to dunk, ha ha). But when the other guys said 'Yeah, course, why not, it ain't no thaang, let's do this...' I wasn't gonna NOT do it. I had to represent for Nigerians, Poets, and South London bros, so... this is what happened.

When we got back down to solid ground, we started the "Dangerous Writers Club". We haven't done much since this. In actuality, this consists of our only club activity, but who wants in? Let's do something.

New website!

So, this is the latest incarnation of inuaellams.com. I've been wanting to update the site for years now and whilst the world rested over the Christmas & New Year break, I powered through to create this. The difficulty was writing about myself; I got really bored of it and it took three times as long as it should have, but I think I've done okay. I'm still to add a 'shop' page and perhaps a 'testimonial' page for some of the nice things folks like you have said about me. But welcome, please take a look around, hope you find something you find worth reading, worth sharing.