In Search of Africa’s Writing Talent
July 29, 2008 by Kwani Litfest
Filed under News
A Senior Editor, searching for the latest African writing talent is due to land in Nairobi on 5th August to take part in this years Kwani Litfest.
Ellah Allfrey, a Senior Editor with the Random House imprint Jonathan Cape is looking for good scripts to build her list of contemporary African writers. The Zimbabwe born editor, who was recently nominated for a Booksellers Association Nibbie: the Decibel Cultural Diversity Award, will spend time going over manuscripts in her search for hot writing talent.
Allfrey will first give a talk on TUESDAY August 05th at 7.30pm at Club Undecided on Getting Published before taking appointments with individuals. Having commissioned the likes of James Baldwin, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Chinua Achebe and Nuriddin Farah for Penguin Modern Classics, she has great experience to pull from. She also commissioned Mi Revalushanarry Fren, a collection of the poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson.
“All I need is 10 pages and a synopsis of the novel to assess the viability of the book,” said Allfrey who has worked with authors Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan. “And I am sure that Kenya is full of relevant and interesting manuscripts.”
Allfrey commissions history, general non-fiction and literary fiction and a central focus has been the building a list of young African writers within the Cape imprint ? creating what is arguably the premier mainstream list of young African talent in British publishing.? Her prize-winning authors include Dinaw Mengestu, Biyi Bandele and Segun Afolabi.
Please send your synposis and 10 pages only to litfest@kwani.org
(1)From Poems Of Honour-My First Model
SON ET LUMIERE
But poetry is a ceremony at dawn
Admirable like a dowried bride
Performed in a melodious hymn
Has an element of absolute pride
Okot p’Bitek, Poet
Khainga Okwemba, Poet
NKOSI SIKELELE iAFRICA
(God Bless Africa)
SON ET LUMIERE
A great mind
Knows not punishment
It may suffer
Yet it will prefer
Dennis Brutus, Poet
Khainga O’Okwemba, Poet
SON ET LUMIERE
That romantic hour’s gone
After another poet’s born
Speak when there’s someone
Where there’s none refrain
Khadambi Asalache, Poet
Khainga O’Okwemba, Poet
SON ET LUMIERE
Thou art a cultural repertorium
Unrepentant African mythologist
Memoirs in novel, Soldier ram
A poet’s accolade supersedes the rest
Chinua Achebe, Novelist
Khainga O’Okwemba, Poet
(2)From Poems Of Known Tradition-My Second Model
SOCIAL MASQUERADES
BY KHAINGA O’OKWEMBA
You lack in purpose
Yet you inflict presence
That we write in prose
To effect a pro-essence
You,amazing gladiator
Dressed in white frock
Strumming the guitar
Enjoy entertaining the flock
We shall not burn calories
For a dumb art, we assert
For you have erased its glories
Enough of that live concert
You, philosopher of mob thinking
Masquerade of social empathy
We indict youy for Africa’s stinking-
A continent contaminated in apathy
Those who jam your performance
Cannot write in their language
This endemic is abetted with silence-
A continental flag hoisted to gauge
Years of massive plunder and exploitation
The gestation of a communique for restitution
The West in a summit can accept a petition
But for Africa’s own plunder and inaction
BRIDE BREED
BY KHAINGA O’OKWEMBA
Ipi ingineyo
Isofikra Afrikaye
Nyota Nyeusiyo
Japohishma angaziye
Look at our bride breed
Cast in a pilgrim’s pride
Dazzling in a tribunate toga
Eyes wide, with a dramatis drum
Arrived at the central comitia
In the most of unlikely undertaking
Swift with a flambeau, fervor
To injure mourn mendacity
There is a beautiful sanguine song
Supreme and violent like the wild wind
In annals of history, that shook tall trees
Desuading her from forward fear
Oh! such journeying to tender tease
To witness women, their dangling baby bubby
Joyful in the rainforest, fetching firewood
Though they now learn what did Delaila
What are our women famous for?
They swelled their new homes, households
With good dancers, sisterings, songstars
They brought their in-laws maidens, mothers
This poem was written on the night of August 28, 2006, hours after US Senator, Barrack Obama addressed Kenyans at the University of Nairobi during his trip to Native Africa.
THIS WILL BIND US TOGETHER
BY KHAINGA O’OKWEMBA
We shall move from the dreadland
Where an inglorious Kinglet is uprooting us
An iron bravado film maker on drillend
Oh Kipling must this testament torment us –
IIIiberal seminarian suckling ariden green
Throttled victims of an accident, a mortal meat
The spectre of bloodthirst cannibal greed
And this the whole world must meet.
A demi-god undieted on Olympian food
Iron carpet, heavy boots reclining in Adiscourt
Chest thumping on a moments feeling
These Philistines are quiet, they are stout
Banded nightly spiritends on dry reason
Handworkers of sprawling makeshifts of polythenes
Where we haggle for a morsel and deathly ransom
With a prenatal trauma girl, subjected by riffle beasts
Travel winds presently urge me to swim
Row, row, row on a strangeland from offshoes
A seafarer, unlearned befriends the storm
Lo! Intranquil sea, dismembered ferry with pirates
But every man is born a person
And all humans must embrace a society
Though not all mankind tread this path
This is what will bind me to duty
A WORLD SO FORMULATED (2007)
BY KHAINGA O’OKWEMBA
This world we shall bestride
Is full of masculine type
Thou art scribe, ala feminine
I urge your recollections to engrave
There too, I stake my claim
A poet maudit without calm
With a panspipe, I sing to them
A melody of unjutted rhym’
I look to the sky, which border
I learned, heaven is found yonder
Here, is residence of a supreme ruler
Holding court, sending a kleptocrat to fir’
This is the fate awaiting irritant oligarchies
To surrender toe after finger in a furnace
To surrender finger after toe in a furnace,
This is the fate awaiting irredeemable disinheriters
Fancy, oh, tribal bigotends, a languid story
That’s written in red ink for future memory
Hercules’ life was foretold with a seer’s rarity
He rejected bodily pleasure for virtuous spirituality
(3)From The Epic Poem-My Third Model
FIRST BALLAD from Khainga O’Okwemba’s epic
Let us
Go
If
We
Should
The two of us
Where Women
Dine
When Men
Wine
Like bockerels
And bockerets, to party in pair
You promised last
Friday
To invite to efflorescent
Eden to escape
Garden to bliss, to party in pair
Sh—– hush———— quiet
Like last night
Eyes fixated
Each to each
Recite a poem
Heaven and Earth
Without resident
Is Moulded
Oh, prince
Careful, deliberate
Call me a nympho
SECOND BALLAD from Khainga O’Okwemba’s epic
And, the princess
Special delicate, cautious
Entertains her virile friend
Listen:
Because, you aren’t
Virgin
Do not tell me you’re
Clean
And they say you’re
Common
At our famous street
Slut
O to photographic
Reporter
Give me, clip to prove
Point
And now to you my love
Lull
Me to sleep, we will talk
Tomorrow
I envy
Princess
I envy
STRUTTING IN THE NIGHTMARES
The rivers clash!
Amid the hush that subdues the village ruins
I look across the smoldering iron
And see senseless irony
The end of civilization?
I ask as I look into my mind
What was that again?
I seek solace in my heart
Imagining the redness of my blood
And the humanity of my heart
Again, can this be so hard?
For one to kiss so hot
The strangeness of the earth’s belly
With the ignorance of outside hell
Perhaps it was a dream
Save for the show of cream
Engulfing the crown of dreams
For the growth of a real human