He dreamed of having his own plot of land, I saw him in this image. Depiction of Ausar, God of the underworld From an African cosmological perspective death is not the end of life per se. It is rather an aspect or phase of an ever revolving continuum. It is a part of a circle […]
Antonio Butts – Red Woman I might have let it go, these automatic writing bursts I have from time to time but recent challenges have urged me to try to understand what we mean when we speak loftily or basically about Love. And despite this urgency I would have tried to let it go – […]
A collage of the picture post on Big Smith’s Facebook page Some of you may have read my last blog post about my recent trip to Guyana which was a personal account related to the Camp Street Prison fire and my brother being caught up in that tragedy. What follows is first an attempt to […]
I arrived in Guyana one week after the Camp Street Fire that burnt down Guyana’s infamous top security prison. Located in the city centre, against better advice and calls for decades to relocate it, this was the most major of several calamities befalling the prison. Many before this calamity, and since, have suggested relocating it […]
Reluctant ParticipantThe theme ‘Dreaming Diaspora: Doing Diaspora’ sounded fluffy. This wasn’t the reason I didn’t initially want to go to the conference. I knew I couldn’t afford it! From the outset, I understood that it would have to be self-funded, given that I’m not attached to an academic institution, but am independent, based in the […]
It is a serious indictment of our society that amidst the disaster, grief and anger of the Grenfell Fire that the authorities continue to collude in lying to all of us. Who are the ‘authorities’? and why would they conspire to treat the public like we’re all too stupid to read between their lies? Mainstream […]
‘The unexamined life is not worth living: and I know that self-delusion in no matter what small or lofty cause is a price no writer can afford. His subject is himself and the world and it requires every ounce of stamina he can summon to look on himself and the world as they are.’ James […]
A few years ago I discovered something interesting about myself. I have the planet Jupiter in the 12th house of my birth chart. I must have known this for much longer but had no idea or hadn’t taken time to consider what it meant. Although interpretations vary about the significance of the 12th house, it […]
The first time we met we had a disagreement. I don’t recall exactly what we argued about. He had been invited by my university, London Met (then University of North London, where I was a student at that time) to be a writer in residence. He attended one of our classes (I think it was […]
“Most African born people do not recall a precise ceremony of that kind and function, not in the original traditions. My sense is that Africans have created it in conditions of exile to replace the duty of initiation, which in the original communities is spread over much, much longer periods starting at puberty.” (Eusi Kwayana) […]