Another Great literary Evening - Cultural Exchanges 2014 and Good News On the Way…?

In keeping my creative artistic juices fresh as it were, on Monday, I had an incredible literary time of it . I attended De Montfort University, Cultural Exchanges Event part of the Festival. I look forward to this Festival with great anticipation, for its host of fabulous arts cultural speakers and topics, with the amazing Rapper/Poet, Song Writer  Journalist  - Akala. He did not disappoint, he started with a brief trip around Black History before Slavery .  Before then segueing into African Diasporic  historical Oral and Musical traditions of the Griots of West Africa, to the 'New World'.  In addition, to then testing the audience, to guess comparatively, lyrics from contemporary Rap/Hip Hop and Shakespeare - without indicating firstly which was which . The audience of students, writers, poets, lecturers, etc. was  about 50/50, in ascribing correctly the lyrical phrases, to either Rap or Shakespeare.  Akala brought alive, reclaimed and democratized Shakespeare, in an interesting and dynamic way. This he more than ably demonstrated, in his superlative performances at breakneck speed, by a number of his  own raps/poetry that utilises titles and quotes from Shakespeare, inviting the audience to number how many in fact there used.  

Later on Monday evening, I attended Word Factory at the Case Restaurant Loft, Leicester for the first time, to see Diriye Osman and others read  their  short stories, from their published collections. There was a  lovely warm welcome from Lindsay and it was well attended. I was ravenous from doing back to back events and sought refreshments from the menu, conveniently set on my table. There was a wide range of  stories read, from poignant, humorous, sensual and quirky. Followed by an informative  Q & A  with all the Writers and a discussion about short story writing, i.e. the different genres e.g flash fictions, prose poems and novella's etc . After a chat with \jacob Ross I realized I write epic poems, prose poems alongside other shorter poems for page & stage and plays.  I connected with the gorgeous  and fierce Diriye Osman and we soon realized, we had many literary and arts contacts in common, in London where he is based. I bought two copies of his delightful book Fairytales for Lost Children (Angelica Press).  As I will give one of Diriye's books, as a gift to a close friend. I knew would also enjoy these lovely tales

So for the last couple of weeks been, I have been thinking about my own writing, that I hope to be working over the coming weeks .  I have the beginnings of  a story I definitely, want to write  that I believe will be the start of another fascinating journey… another choreopoem !  A very different one, with new challenges to face in the writing of it. Watch this space for good news- thats in the post so to speak, more details coming soon...