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New Young Voices In Poetry #2 – VICTORIA ADUKWEI BULLEY

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A sequence of short features focusing on the five individual young poets included in the recently-launched collection Rising Stars published by Otter-Barry Books.

Victoria Adukwei Bulley, born in 1991, is a British-Ghanaian poet, writer and film-maker, living in London. She is a former Barbican Young Poet and has had worked commissioned by the Royal Academy of Arts. Her debut pamphlet, Girl B, is part of the 2017 New-generation African Poets series.

She is the director of Mother Tongues, an intergenerational poetry, film and translation project.

Interviewed recently by Dandano, a community project aimed at analyzing, documenting and archiving African film and music, Bulley described the project’s procedure: “A poet asks her mother to write a translation of a poem, the mother agrees and does so. Then, the two are filmed at a studio in intimate conversation, followed by the mother reciting the translation, with the original poem recited by the daughter.”

She went on

The project was borne out of a need to connect with the language that I’ve heard around me since birth, yet cannot understand. In my case, that language is Ga, spoken by the people most historically based around Accra, in Ghana. I have a deep love for indigenous cultures, and languages are the entry point into these. I also have a feeling of disconnection and limitedness, knowing that I can only really speak English. The fact that lesser-spoken languages are rapidly declining in usage is one that makes me intensely sad. MOTHER TONGUES, for me, is one small and meaningful attempt to restore and reconnect what is at risk of being lost or neglected.

Central to Bulley’s section in Rising Stars is a powerful prose poem, ‘This Poem Is Not About Parakeets’. A young woman is on a bus. Two men are mouthing off about immigrants. Saying things like, “They take up all the housing” and “They’re scroungers”. She has seven stops to travel. In her mind, as a means of blanking out the anger and prejudice, she thinks of parakeets…

I want to tell the men how the parakeets got here. All they do is take our jobs. How they were brought here in the 60s for a film, and then escaped. They’re scroungers. I want to tell them how despite the bad weather they never lost their sings. Why are they so noisy? How none of April’s showers ever washed their colours off. They don’t even try to blend in.
 

Elsewhere Bulley shows her versatility as a poet. There is a clever villanelle about the cat Toby killing a bird, which begins

Toby killed the bird at first light,
left the hallway dashed with feathers:
a fraction of a pillow fight.

Before we woke up, after night,
and hoovered up the snowy weather,
Toby killed the bird at first light.

As a photographer who loves taking portraits of people with big curly hair, I especially enjoyed the ‘Afro Hair Haiku’ sequence…

I used to harm it,
force it down, flat and lifeless –
a ghost of itself.

Now I let it grow
the way it wants to grow:
confident again.

‘Strange Dusts’ is a poem about African sands being blown into European skies and falling as ‘pollution’

air is indiscriminate
and wind knows
no such thing
as nations

Posts about the other poets in the collection will follow shortly.
Ruth Awolola

 

Julianna Baggott, much-published novelist & poet, feature

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Writing under her own name and under the pen names Bridget Asher and N.E. Bode, Baggott has had more than 20 books published, with over 100 foreign editions.

Her most recent release is Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders, which Kirkus Reviews calls “an ambitious portrait of a family created from equal parts secrecy and love.”

Her young adult novel Pure, the first in a three-part post-apocalyptic trilogy, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 2012 and ALA Alex Award winner; it is in development with Karen Rosenfelt, the lead producer of The Twilight Saga, at Sunswept Entertainment.

Baggott began publishing short stories when she was 22 and sold her first novel while still in her twenties.

After receiving a master in fine arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she published her first novel, Girl Talk, which was a national bestseller and was quickly followed by The Boston Globe bestseller The Miss America Family, and then The Boston Herald Book Club selection, The Madam, a historical novel based on the life of her grandmother.

She also co-wrote Which Brings Me to You with Steve Almond, A Best Book of 2006.

Her Bridget Asher novels include The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted, The Pretend Wife, and My Husband’s Sweethearts.

She has also published award-winning novels for younger readers under the pen name N.E. Bode as well as under Julianna Baggott.

Her seven novels for younger readers include: The Anybodies trilogy, which was a People Magazine summer reading pick, a Washington Post Book of the Week, a Girl’s Life Top Ten, and a Booksense selection; The Slippery Map, and The Ever Breath.

via Best-selling novelist, poet to speak at LSSU.

Shel Silverstein (who would have been 85 today) Songwriter

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Like most people, you probably think of Silverstein as a children’s book author, and you’ve got that right. He became famous after the publication of one of his first children’s books, The Giving Tree. He cemented his reputation with three volumes of whimsical poetry for children: Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic and Falling Up. These books and other children’s fare sum up his legacy for many fans – they read the stories and poems to children and grandchildren, maybe even grew up on Silverstein’s poetry themselves. It’s a good thing to be remembered for, and Silverstein was proud of his children’s books.

But Silverstein’s career proved extremely diverse, and it neither began nor ended with his writings for children. He was a cartoonist for Playboy magazine and, earlier, for the Pacific Stars and Stripes military newspaper while he served in the U.S. Army. He wrote plays, typically for adults, penning more than 100 one-acts over the course of his career. He penned screenplays, and he even wrote whimsical poems directed distinctly toward the over-18 set; his adult work often tended toward the risqué.

You may not have seen any of his plays or read any of his ribald verses, but we bet you’ve heard some of his songs. Other singers made them famous, but many of them bear his unmistakable voice. Here are five Silverstein songs to listen to in celebration of his 85th birthday Sept. 25, 2015.

1. “A Boy Named Sue”
Yes, it’s true! “A Boy Named Sue” is probably Silverstein’s best-known song, the one that topped the charts and won a Grammy, and perhaps the only one that was ever recorded in a prison. Johnny Cash made Silverstein’s tune famous after recording it in his At San Quentin prison performance, and the song became a smash hit. It was inspired by childhood stories told by Silverstein’s close friend Jean Shepherd, the humorist who wrote and narrated the holiday classic movie A Christmas Story. When Cash recorded the song at San Quentin, he didn’t yet know it well; he was giving it a try, to see how it went over, and had to consult the lyric sheet frequently. The audience loved it – see them laughing over and over in the clip – and Cash made it a regular part of his repertoire.

see other songs via Shel Silverstein Set to Music | Legacy.com.

The best children’s books for February

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The best children’s books for February, as chosen by the Washington Post:

From inauspicious beginnings, Gordon Parks (1912-2006) became a pioneering photographer and filmmaker as well as a novelist, composer and poet. In this picture-book biography, Caldecott honoree Carole Boston Weatherford focuses on Parks’s photographic career, particularly the images he took in Washington in the late 1930s and early ’40s. Parks’s accomplishments are especially remarkable given the limited choices he faced as a young African American male. (A teacher in his Kansas elementary school told Parks and his classmates, “You’ll all wind up porters and waiters.”) But after working as a piano player, porter and waiter, he bought a camera, taught himself to take pictures and transformed his life. As a government photographer assigned to Washington, he documented the segregation of the city — and with a single photograph of a cleaning woman named Ella Watson, got the world to take notice. Weatherford’s succinct text and Jamey Christoph’s stylized, muted-color illustrations convey Parks’s vibrant talent while delivering an enlightening perspective on the past.

— Abby McGanney Nolan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-best-childrens-books-for-february/2015/02/03/8010da62-a236-11e4-b146-577832eafcb4_story.html

Shel Silverstein Biopic at McG’s Wonderland

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Wonderland Sound and Vision has launched development on a biopic about Shel Silverstein, the prolific children’s book author, cartoonist and lyricist.

Wonderland principals McG and Mary Viola are producing with Sean Sorensen and Motion Theory’s Mathew Cullen. Writing partners Chris Shafer and Paul Vicknair are adapting “A Boy Named Shel: The Life and Times of Shel Silverstein” by Lisa Rogak.

Wonderland optioned the material and will be funding development. Wonderland’s Nathan Stadler will oversee the project.

via Shel Silverstein Biopic at McG’s Wonderland | Variety.

London Gets Its Own Young Poet Laureate: Warsan Shire

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London Gets Its Own Young Poet Laureate

Warsan Shire has been appointed the first young poet laureate for London. The 24-year-old will take on the post for the next year.
Shire’s role was announced by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy at the Houses of Parliament today (3rd October), National Poetry Day.
The Kenyan-born Somali poet has given readings around the world, and featured in The Salt Book of Younger Poets (Salt). Her first book, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, was published by Flipped Eye Publishing in 2011.

via Warsan Shire named London's 'young poet laureate' | The Bookseller.