The Port Harcourt in which we grew up, was a Garden City.  The garden seeded a close circle of families who largely knew one another. This community

From my vantage point on the balcony of the theatre, I could see the speaker clearly. The hall in East London was full on that cold evening in

I hear your call,I hear it far away;I hear it break the circleOf these crouching hills….. Thus begins Gabriel Okara’s epic or seminal poem, The

“Ayi”. “Yes Madam”. “You have never told me that I am beautiful”. “No Madam”.“Why not?”“It is not a woman’s place to tell

 ‘This poem takes its beginning from an oral tradition of the performance of the dirge. Listen carefully, it’s a dirge, it’s a funeral

In 2008, to further draw attention to the importance of reading to personal and national development, we decided to have prominent people read to

In the seventies, when Port Harcourt could rightly have claimed its title of Garden City, my late father, Justice P.O.E. Bassey, would take us to the

I believe it was Amadou Hampete Ba, the Malian writer, who said ‘En Afrique, chaque vieillard qui mort, c’est une bibliotheque qui brule’

DAY ONE: EDIN HERE I COME!It‘s Thursday 19th August 2010 and I am just walking into room 520 in my hotel in Scotland’s capital city. Once I’d