Inua Ellams

It was all yellow.

June 20, 2015

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.

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

Why I'm giving up poetry for dance.

May 13, 2015

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:

Come see me dance.

Facts About Africa!

April 13, 2015

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.

April 12, 2015

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

March 21, 2015

#WordPorn

St Luke

February 15, 2015

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

January 22, 2015

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

January 17, 2015

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!

January 5, 2015

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.

#Afterhours Diary #2

January 5, 2015

Today is the second day of the year long #Afterhours project and I am excited and nervous at the task ahead: to rewrite my childhood through* British poetry, by writing poems after/in-response to poem published between the years 1984 and 20012, from when I was born to when I turned 18.

I was born to a Muslim father and Christian mother. As I child I regularly attended Mosques and Churches and from an early age, learnt to balance these faiths. It also meant religion became, and has remained, fluid to me. I believe God exists but do not believe one order of believe is truer than another. I’ve also begun to look for signs and wonders, little clues set out by the Universe (or whatever you’d like to call it) that I’m doing what I’m supposed to. Last Sunday for instance, I read poems at a tiny theatre in Exeter. I walked into the room and found a board game called Othello (one of my favourite plays, never knew the game existed!) and a novel by Terry Pratchett whose books got me into reading and writing. The only available chair in the front row was numbered 23 and I’d spent the hours previous working on a poem involving Michael Jordan (23 was his number) and the day before, I’d sprained my ankle playing basketball. Now, these might just seem like coincidences… but three of them?

Why do I mention this? Signs. Tom Leonard’s book Intimate Voices, containing the first poem I will re-write for #Afterhours was first published in 1984, the year I was born. The book was republished in 2003, the year I started working as a poet. Finally, the poem I will re-write, the title itself ‘Unrelated Incidents’ echoes this attempt of mine to find meaning from these unrelated incidents, and echoes what we do when we write poetry: to group together unrelated incidents that they are greater than the sum of their parts, which begs (to return to the top) a kind of religious faith.

The most well known section of the poem is called Six O’clock News: bit.ly/1x7hayd. Read to see what I’m working with.

The Common

August 20, 2014

When I walked out of my flat yesterday, I saw a wounded pigeon at the entrance to the lil gated community I live in in Brixton. The bird was twitching on the ground, I think the half-broken wing it raised feebly was healthier than the second tucked under its weight. Days before, someone had defecated at this same spot. My flatmate who is American and more than a tad superstitious thought it was a coincidence too much and considered dowsing the place, our flat, the gated area, the whole lot with holy water. I encouraged him, "Protection is better than cure; Do that shit" was my response. As we came and went throughout the day, we watched the bird raise its feeble wing. Another resident we bumped into at the gate suggested we call the company who clean the grounds to come and deal with it, she too was unsettled by the bird but could not bring herself to touch it. As dusk neared, we returned and found the bird gone. We wondered if someone had cleared it up but as we searched, found it had crawled to the dark shady part where the hedge meets the brick-work, where it could die in peace. My flatmate and I commended this. "A noble beast" we thought. "Seeking an honourable death" we thought. "Saving its savage carcass from the eyes of the living" we thought.

A month before, I had traveled to Devon to work with Beaford Arts on a theatre project. Devon is an astonishing, interesting place. It is take-your-breath-away beautiful. There are beaches just miles away from farms. For it's vegetation and wildlife, it is protected by the government, who, for this and many other nuanced reasons, want to know the price of every piece of it. Under the title Eco System Services, the attempt is to figure out how much a piece of land is worth, and what it does. Does it feed animals? Does it soak up rain water? Does it grow food? Is it a natural flood defence? What does that mean in monetary terms? My job was to speak with farmers, conservationists, climate change experts, locals and try to articulate how one might go about putting a price on everything. It was a job of listening, of conversations that were heart breaking, overwhelming, passionate and multilayered. When it came to writing, I didn't know where to start, but an idea crystallised after I met a farmer, his wife and two sons.

They told stories and anecdotes to illustrate how complicated a process it would be, the vast holes in such system, how there are some aspects of the land that simply cannot be valued, that are (by that definition) priceless. He refereed to us as townies, and he and his colleagues as country folk. He did not like townies. As a black african I'm used to prejudice, I found it refreshing, dare I say thrilling, to be prejudiced because of where I lived rather than the colour of my skin. As we talked and I asked the right questions, he began to relax and slowly 'you townies' became 'those townies'. We 'othered' them so we could point and laugh. I have no guilt about this because the stories he gave to illustrate his point were water tight.

For instance, He spoke about us townies buying up country farms as second homes, going for 'countryside walks' through farm and grazing land. When they go walking, he said, they see maybe a wounded bull or a cow, think we are negligent farmers, report us to the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) who ask to do something about it. Two things we can do, one, let the animal alone for two-three weeks which is how long it takes to heal or two, kill it. As a bull what would you want? Us farmers know that's how long it takes and want to give the geezer a chance, but townies don't... they interfere, complain that the animal is suffering and we'll have to do something about it. Same thing with carrion they see on the land. Flies feast on the corpses, crows, wild foxes, mink; it is incredibly rich fertiliser which goes back into the soil. It's the circle of life, he said, but townies see this, call Defra and we have to clean it up because it makes them uncomfortable. Everything dies. Everything.

Back in London, a month later, the same 'townie' I pointed at and laughed back then, is same townie who shook at the sight of dying bird, is he who stares back from the mirror, is me. There are questions I've asked since. How far have we urban dwellers strayed from the natural order of things? Do the circles we build in urban environments ignore the ultimate definite end? Is it a circle then? The conversations I had left me feeling that we should let country folk deal with country issues and let townie folk deal with townie issues, but of course it isn't that simple. The play I wrote is called Marsh Orchids & Concrete, a two-hander where a communications manager from London meets a farmer from Devon. I tried to demonstrate the complication of intersection, that we inhabit the same land, that policies cross boarders, farmers feed cities, decisions in westminster ruffle leaves, that we are invested in our natural world, how despite the naive, can't-stand-a-dying-bird urban spirit in me, this brick city boy still yearns for fields.