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 was made up of mainly professionals: decent folks who lived simple, contented lives. This was the Port Harcourt of Herbert’s childhood. The majority...

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 January 1999. I had left my office on Brompton Road earlier than usual to get to the venue well before the doors opened at 7pm. The seat […]...

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 Call of the River Nun. I called Gabriel Okara early in 2005 to tell him of the Rainbow Book Club’s plan to begin a national reading campaign right her...

“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 other women such things, Madam.”“And why not? Certainly they do it in Lagos, Accra and other big towns.”“This is neither Lagos nor Accra, Madam. T...

 ‘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 song. [He sings in Ghanaian language – interpreted]: “Oh tell them, tell Kpeti, tell Kovoedawo, tell them that they have forgotten their off-springs; ...

In 2008, to further draw attention to the importance of reading to personal and national development, we decided to have prominent people read to children. To kick off this phase of our work, we were looking for a role model. The individual had to be someone who understood what the Rainbow Book Club...

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 theatre in the old township of the oil city to watch plays. There one grew aware of, and enjoyed, the city’s rich literary heritage to which writers...

I believe it was Amadou Hampete Ba, the Malian writer, who said ‘En Afrique, chaque vieillard qui mort, c’est une bibliotheque qui brule’ meaning ‘Every African elder that passes on is a library set ablaze’ (my translation). The Rainbow Book Club members and friends were gathered at Le Mer...