1 Minute Book Review: The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man by Nick Makoha

Name of the book: The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man 
Author:  Nick Makoha  
Publisher:  Flipped Eye Publishing 
What's the book about? 
Nick Makoha's first collection of poems, The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man, recalls the dilemma of Ralph Ellison's protagonist but relocates the angst and passion of displacement in contemporary England. Somewhere between Uganda and England, Nick Makoha is redefining manhood, fatherhood, and intimacy in a Black British context.
Why am I reading the book? 
I met Nick Makoha at the Yardstick Festival. As writers from the African diaspora, I was intrigued by his poems because of the similarity in the themes we  are exploring, but also by the generational and national differences. 
Quote from the book:
The Light 
The city clings like skin to the back of me, like summer sweat, my oils mixing
with the humidity of the night. Sleep the language I am speaking,
every move mimicking death. My body leaves a signature
in the sheets. I rise; my feet touch the carpet’s canvas cooling me slightly. The window spilling moonlight
into the room. Artificial light born from the TV mimics the light of the sky. Voices like my vision, blurred.
My hands snakes to the remote to mute the sound that brought me to sleep and in this moment awakens me.

Where to buy: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-Collection-Invisible-Mouthmark/dp/1905233035/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375712586&sr=8-  1&keywords=Nick+Makoha

About the Author

Nick 'urbanspirit' Makoha is an immensely talented poet of Ugandan origin. On stage he drops he drops a succession of interwoven one-liners so deep that every longitude ever imagined begins to shiver with insecurity. The original poet-in-residence with London's revered performance showcase, Kindred Spirit, urbanspirit catapulted himself to legendary status by disappearing off the poetry scene for two years. He re-emerged in early 2005 with a completed poetry chapbook, The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man, and has begun to reclaim the territory he haunted for many years.
***
I've modified this format from One Minute Book Reviews: http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/

Yardstick Poetry Workshop: Cotham Centre

On Friday, June 27, 2013, I conducted a writing workshop with Jamala Safari at the Cotham Centre in Bristol, England. Using Kwame Dawes's "Tornado Child," we talked about the elements of poetry and later I invited the students to write a poem.

Here are a few poems that Lucy Mitchell, a teacher at Cotham tried with her Year 7 (12 year old) students.

Flo Adey-Meadows

I am a waterfall child

I see the future and race to the end

Others look and may pretend.

No matter what they do and feel

I will carry on and somehow heal.

I am a waterfall child.

I may have crashed into the world

I turn to bubbles and gently

Become peaceful but effervescent.

I come with great power

Charlie Keith

I am a sun child

As I move plants glow with energy

From the sun

When I finish my mission I will burn into light.

I will feel like nothing.

All I will know is I am done.

But I have a determination to go.

When I arrive people will rejoice

With their inner light.

My mission is over

Magical times are with us

I AM THE SUN CHILD

I am magical.

Isaac Stone

I am a lightning child

When I am commanded by thunder

I dive bomb the ground

I kill trees

I electrocute fish

I flashed into being and shocked the world

I am a lightning child

When people see me they freak and run.

I am the lightning child.

Amazing.

Masoom Islam

I am an earthquake child

When I was born

My parents named me Shawn

I made the midwife’s hair puff

I was called the hurricane child

My behaviour was mild

My rage is a hurricane

I’m going to Haiti.

An earthquake.

When I arrive mountains will crumble

The sky will fall.

Fatima Hussein

I am a sunny child

The wind was calm

When I first touched my Mum’s palm

When I was born the wind made an unusual sound

I am a sunny child.

I opened my eyes

The wind moved in one direction

When I run the wind runs

I am a sunny child

I am invisible

I walk past and you feel the wind on your face

You see a sparkle

The sun glistens on your head

The sun follows you

I play with the sun

I am awesome

Kaydia Oliver

I am a waterfall child

The fish are plopping

The water is crashing

The colours are bright

Sky and water

I am a waterfall child

I am running to the sea

I am cold in the water

When I go to the sea

I am happy

Sophie Wiggins

I am a volcano child

The roar erupted from the mouth of my mother

The burning pain grew

I am a volcano child

I invade the privacy of pale-faced people although they were expecting me

The fire inside me guides me to my belonging

I tumble down the mountain of my childhood to my flat ground

This will remain constant

I am a volcano child.

You will find me one day.

Maurice Byrne

I am a lightning child

When I was born I flashed my power

Meeting anything that was in my way with a

Façade of light.

The animals fled into the night,

Illuminated with my flashes.

I am a lightning child.

Now I move along

Through the clouds from which I was born

Smiting the people who hurt me,

Setting things on fire.

They see my blinding white then plunge into the darkest night.

I am a lightning child

I will always be here

My foes will be in fear

Feel my presence everywhere

Always poised to strike

People will be glad

Feel secure

Always there when in need

I am present.

Bryony Kay

I am a flower child

I am a river child

Rushing through landscapes

Far and wide

Away from the comfort of Spring

Sprouting from a desolate rock.

I am a river child

Brought on by the storms

Defeating the lightning

The storm settles

So does the current

No longer carrying the weight of the world

On my shoulders

I am free to wander the rushes and waterlillies

I am a river child

I twist and turn

Wherever the wind takes me.

After "Tornado Child" by Kwame Dawes.

Thank you, Lucy Mitchell and the Yardstick Festival, for this opportunity to share my craft and Kwame Dawes's poetry with your students.

***

A Song of Freedom (for Asif Khan)

From the splintered nations of Africa

through London and the endless rows

of houses, repetitive as sin, orphans 

of empire barged along the Avon 

in the wake of restored galleons, symbols 

of our mothers’ grief, our fathers’ shame

on a river that forgave, but would never forget

our tortured questions of birthright that rise 

with vespers from Bristol Cathedral 

where newly ordained curates stroll

across College Green to embrace 

children in starched dresses and suits 

under the gaze of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, 

books tucked under his arm, in this city of refuge.

***

A poem for the writers from the African Diaspora, who participated in the Yardstick Festival: Lorna Goodison, Tanya Shirley, Lemn Sissay, Warsan Shire, Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Nick Makoha, Leeto Thale, Jamal Safari, Emman Egya Sule, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Dean Atta, Chioma Okereke, and Dee Jarrett Macauley;  the organizer, Asif Khan and his team: Yoma Smith, David Danderson, Bertel Martin, Sam Downie, and Jon Craig; and Faruk Choudhury, the Lord Mayor of Bristol, a city of refuge.

Yardstick Festival Authors: Dean Atta

I Am Nobody's Nigger

Rappers when you use the word "nigger" remember that's one of the last words Stephen Lawrence heard, so don't tell me it's a reclaimed word.

I am nobody's nigger
So please, let my ancestors rest in peace
Not turn in their graves in Jamaica plantations
Or the watery graves of the slave trade 
Thrown overboard into middle passage 
Just for insurance claims
They were chained up on a boat
As many as they could manage and stay afloat
Stripped of dignity and all hope 
Awaiting their masters and European names
But the sick and the injured were dead weight to toss
And Lloyds of London would cover that cost.

I am nobody's nigger
So you can tell Weezy and Drake 
That they made a mistake 
I am nobody's nigger now
So you can tell Kanye and Jigga 
I am not a nigger... in Paris
I'm not a nigger in London
I'm not a nigger in New York
I'm not a nigger in Kingston
I'm not a nigger in Accra
Or a nigger with attitude in Compton
Cos "I don't wanna be called yo nigga"

How were you raised on Public Enemy
And still became your own worst enemy?
You killed Hip Hop and resurrected headless zombies 
That can't think for themselves or see where they're going
Or quench the blood lust because there's no blood flowing
In their hearts, just in the streets 
They don't give a damn as long as they eating
Their hearts ain't beating, they're cold as ice (bling)
Because they would put money over everything
Money over self respect or self esteem
Or empowering the youth to follow their dreams
Stacking paper cos it's greater than love it seems
Call me "nigger" cos you're scared of what "brother" means

To know that we share something unspeakable
To know that as high as we rise we are not seen as equal
To know that racism is institutional thinking
And that "nigger" is the last word you heard before a lynching.

Yardstick Festival Authors: Lemn Sissay

Having spent 18 years as a child of the state in children's homes and foster care, you could say that I'm an expert on the subject, and in being an expert, I want to let you know that being an expert does in no way make you right in light of the truth.

If you're in care, legally the government is your parent, loco parentis. Margaret Thatcher was my mother. (Laughter) Let's not talk about breastfeeding. (Laughter)

Harry Potter was a foster child. Pip from "Great Expectations" was adopted; Superman was a foster child; Cinderella was a foster child; Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo, was fostered and institutionalized; Batman was orphaned; Lyra Belacqua from Philip Pullman's "Northern Lights" was fostered; Jane Eyre, adopted; Roald Dahl's James from "James and the Giant Peach;" Matilda; Moses -- Moses! (Laughter) Moses! (Laughter) -- the boys in Michael Morpurgo's "Friend or Foe;" Alem in Benjamin Zephaniah's "Refugee Boy;" Luke Skywalker -- Luke Skywalker! (Laughter) -- Oliver Twist; Cassia in "The Concubine of Shanghai" by Hong Ying; Celie in Alice Walker's "The Color Purple." All of these great fictional characters, all of them who were hurt by their condition, all of them who spawned thousands of other books and other films, all of them were fostered, adopted or orphaned. It seems that writers know that the child outside of family reflects on what family truly is more than what it promotes itself to be. That is, they also use extraordinary skills to deal with extraordinary situations on a daily basis.

How have we not made the connection? And why have we not made the connection, between — How has that happened? — between these incredible characters of popular culture and religions, and the fostered, adopted or orphaned child in our midst? It's not our pity that they need. It's our respect. I know famous musicians, I know actors and film stars and millionaires and novelists and top lawyers and television executives and magazine editors and national journalists and dustbinmen and hairdressers, all who were looked after children, fostered, adopted or orphaned, and many of them grow into their adult lives in fear of speaking of their background, as if it may somehow weaken their standing in the foreground, as if it were somehow Kryptonite, as if it were a time bomb strapped on the inside. Children in care, who've had a life in care, deserve the right to own and live the memory of their own childhood. It is that simple.

My own mother — and I should say this here — she same to this country in the late '60s, and she was, you know, she found herself pregnant, as women did in the late '60s. You know what I mean? They found themselves pregnant. And she sort of, she had no idea of the context in which she'd landed.

In the 1960s -- I should give you some context -- in the 1960s, if you were pregnant and you were single, you were seen as a threat to the community. You were separated from your family by the state. You were separated from your family and placed into mother and baby homes. You were appointed a social worker. The adoptive parents were lined up. It was the primary purpose of the social worker, the aim, to get the woman at her most vulnerable time in her entire life, to sign the adoption papers. So the adoption papers were signed. The mother and baby's homes were often run by nuns. The adoption papers were signed, the child was given to the adoptive parents, and the mother shipped back to her community to say that she'd been on a little break. A little break. A little break. The first secret of shame for a woman for being a woman, "a little break." The adoption process took, like, a matter of months, so it was a closed shop, you know, sealed deal, an industrious, utilitarian solution: the government, the farmer, the adopting parents, the consumer, the mother, the earth, and the child, the crop.

It's kind of easy to patronize the past, to forego our responsibilities in the present. What happened then is a direct reflection of what is happening now. Everybody believed themselves to be doing the right thing by God and by the state for the big society, fast-tracking adoption.

So anyway, she comes here, 1967, she's pregnant, and she comes from Ethiopia that was celebrating its own jubilee at the time under the Emperor Haile Selassie, and she lands months before the Enoch Powell speech, the "Rivers of Blood" speech. She lands months before the Beatles release "The White Album," months before Martin Luther King was killed. It was a summer of love if you were white. If you were black, it was a summer of hate. So she goes from Oxford, she's sent to the north of England to a mother and baby home, and appointed a social worker. It's her plan. You know, I have to say this in the Houses -- It's her plan to have me fostered for a short period of time while she studies. But the social worker, he had a different agenda. He found the foster parents, and he said to them, "Treat this as an adoption. He's yours forever. His name is Norman." (Laughter) Norman! (Laughter) Norman!

So they took me. I was a message, they said. I was a sign from God, they said. I was Norman Mark Greenwood. Now, for the next 11 years, all I know is that this woman, this birth woman, should have her eyes scratched out for not signing the adoption papers. She was an evil woman too selfish to sign, so I spent those 11 years kneeling and praying. I tried praying. I swear I tried praying. "God, can I have a bike for Christmas?" But I would always answer myself, "Yes, of course you can." (Laughter) And then I was supposed to determine whether that was the voice of God or it was the voice of the Devil. And it turns out I've got the Devil inside of me. Who knew? (Laughter)

So anyway, two years sort of passed, and they had a child of their own, and then another two years passed, and they had another child of their own, and then another time passed and they had another child that they called an accident, which I thought was an unusual name. (Laughter) And I was on the cusp of, sort of, adolescence, so I was starting to take biscuits from the tin without asking. I was starting to stay out a little bit late, etc., etc. Now, in their religiosity, in their naivete, my mom and dad, which I believed them to be forever, as they said they were, my mom and dad conceived that I had the Devil inside of me.

And what -- I should say this here, because this is how they engineered my leaving. They sat me at a table, my foster mom, and she said to me, "You don't love us, do you?" At 11 years old. They've had three other children. I'm the fourth. The third was an accident.

And I said, "Yeah, of course I do." Because you do.

My foster mother asked me to go away to think about love and what it is and to read the Scriptures and to come back tomorrow and give my most honest and truthful answer. So this was an opportunity. If they were asking me whether I loved them or not, then I mustn't love them, which led me to the miracle of thought that I thought they wanted me to get to. "I will ask God for forgiveness and His light will shine through me to them. How fantastic." This was an opportunity. The theology was perfect, the timing unquestionable, and the answer as honest as a sinner could get.

"I mustn't love you," I said to them. "But I will ask God for forgiveness."

"Because you don't love us, Norman, clearly you've chosen your path."

Twenty-four hours later, my social worker, this strange man who used to visit me every couple of months, he's waiting for me in the car as I say goodbye to my parents. I didn't say goodbye to anybody, not my mother, my father, my sisters, my brothers, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my grandparents, nobody. On the way to the children's home, I started to ask myself, "What's happened to me?" It's not that I'd had the rug pulled from beneath me as much as the entire floor had been taken away.

When I got to the — For the next four, five years, I was held in four different children's homes. On the third children's home, at 15, I started to rebel, and what I did was, I got three tins of paint, Airfix paint that you use for models, and I was -- it was a big children's home, big Victorian children's home -- and I was in a little turret at the top of it, and I poured them, red, yellow and green, the colors of Africa, down the tiles. You couldn't see it from the street, because the home was surrounded by beech trees.

For doing this, I was incarcerated for a year in an assessment center which was actually a remand center. It was a virtual prison for young people.

By the way, years later, my social worker said that I should never have been put in there. I wasn't charged for anything. I hadn't done anything wrong. But because I had no family to inquire about me, they could do anything to me.

I'm 17 years old, and they had a padded cell. They would march me down corridors in last-size order. They -- I was put in a dormitory with a confirmed Nazi sympathizer. All of the staff were ex-police -- interesting -- and ex-probation officers. The man who ran it was an ex-army officer. Every time I had a visit by a person who I did not know who would feed me grapes, once every three months, I was strip-searched. That home was full of young boys who were on remand for things like murder. And this was the preparation that I was being given after 17 years as a child of the state.

I have to tell this story. I have to tell it, because there was no one to put two and two together.

I slowly became aware that I knew nobody that knew me for longer than a year. See, that's what family does. It gives you reference points. I'm not defining a good family from a bad family. I'm just saying that you know when your birthday is by virtue of the fact that somebody tells you when your birthday is, a mother, a father, a sister, a brother, an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, a grandparent. It matters to someone, and therefore it matters to you. Understand, I was 14 years old, tucked away in myself, into myself, and I wasn't touched either, physically touched.

I'm reporting back. I'm reporting back simply to say that when I left the children's home I had two things that I wanted to do. One was to find my family, and the other was to write poetry. In creativity I saw light. In the imagination I saw the endless possibility of life, the endless truth, the permanent creation of reality, the place where anger was an expression in the search for love, a place where dysfunction is a true reaction to untruth.

I've just got to say it to you all: I found all of my family in my adult life. I spent all of my adult life finding them, and I've now got a fully dysfunctional family just like everybody else.

But I'm reporting back to you to say quite simply that you can define how strong a democracy is by how its government treats its child. I don't mean children. I mean the child of the state. Thanks very much. It's been an honor. (Applause) (Applause)

Haiku for Lemn Sissay

The African dream

of flying home to Addis,

Lifted us tonight.

***

Dispatches from the Yardstick Festival: Lorna Goodison

"Let's just end this discussion about postcolonial literature," said Lorna Goodison, effectively dismantling entire departments in Caribbean studies.. I'm learning so much from her (again). Even her offhand remarks are gold.  

My Books @Yardstick Festival

A few of my books  (and a couple in which my work appears) on display at the Yardstick Festival:

Dub Wise

Xango Music

Uncle Obadiah and theAlien

Who’s Your Daddy?

Benjamin, my son

The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories

Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems for Ken Saro-Wiwa 

Visit my author page for the other books: 

Geoffrey Philp

***

Lineup for the Yardstick Festival

Inshallah, I will be joining these talented writers for four days of literary bacchanalia at the Yardstick Literary Festival on June 27-30, 2013.
Lorna Goodison,  Tanya Shirley,  Geoffrey Philp  Lemn Sissay  Warsan Shire  Mukoma Wa Ngugi  Nick Makoha  Leeto Thale  Jamal Safari  Emman Egya Sule  Nii Ayikwei Parkes  Dean Atta  Chioma Okereke 

If you are anywhere in the British Isles (or even if you're not!), come and full-joy (as I&I would say) four days of poetry, storytelling and all round good times:  http://www.yardstick.org.uk/2013-programme/#.Uccl_fmshzI

***

Global Writing Talent Heads to Bath for Major Literature Festival | Bath Business News

Businesses are being invited to support a festival that will bring an impressive array of international writing talent to Bath and Bristol later this month. 

A dozen of the best writers and performance poets from across the African Diaspora will take part in the Yardstick Festival from June 27 to 30.

Prestigious authors at the festival will include Lorna Goodison, Tanya Shirley, Geoffrey Philp (all Jamaican), Lemn Sissay (British Ethiopian), Warsan Shire (Somali), Mukoma Wa Ngugi (Kenyan), Nick Makoha (Ugandan), Leeto Thale (South African) and Jamal Safari (Congolese).

Also taking part will be Emman Egya Sule (Nigerian), Nii Ayikwei Parkes (Ghana), Dean Atta (British Jamaican) and Chioma Okereke (Nigerian)

Global writing talent heads to Bath for major literature festival | Bath Business News:

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