Tuesday, 15 September 2015

 Meeting Amu Nnadi was a blessing and meeting his poetry live in Bishop's court was a greater blessing. His heart is full of love.  Jos has resonated with a Field of Echoes and it is no longer the same.
 The 2-day event organized by the Custodians of Africa literature COAL whose main aim is promoting literature was mind blowing.

Day1 had our guests perform and it was divine! The poem "Ablution" stirred the atmosphere.  Let me not forget to mention that ogene is spiritual lol. When the music goes up you can't help but be moved.
Judith Johnson, Delve, Su'eddie, Ehizogie, Sadiq, Anchorman, Rudolph, Celine and the COAL ambassadors graced the stage and it was awesome.
Mfon's cover version of Beyonce's "I was here" got us on our toes too as she took the audience to another level.

Day2 we hiked, yes we climbed Shere hills and it was both scary and interesting. An experience I will never forget. I mean if you survive climbing Shere Hills then you can survive anything life throws at you.
After we descended the hill, we settled down to eat chicken and play common sense and then we had our open mic.
Mala opened the floor with beautiful melodies from his harmonica and then did a spoken word piece Amu-Nnadi calls "speaking in tongues".
The high priest himself read out one of the poems from the holy book. Oh yes, Field of Echoes is a holy book.
It began well and it ended well but not entirely cause it still echoes within.
Here are highlights of the event in photos.
















Monday, 7 September 2015



The Custodians of African Literature
presents 
Jos Resonates with A Field of Echoes#
Guest Author: Chijioke Amunnadi
Saddiq Dzukogi- Niger
Ehizogie Iyeomoan-Kano
Su'eddie Veshima-Benue
Anchorman-Jos
Mfon, Judith,Rudolph, COAL ambassadors and others will also grace the event.
Day1- 12th September @ 2pm will feature
Book reading
A panel for literary questions
Spoken word
Visual performances
Music
Venue: Bishop's court opposite St Louis, Jos.
Ticket: Free
Day2- 13th September @ 2pm will be an
Open mic and barbecue on Sheri hills.
Ticket: 500naira flat.
Now you don't want to miss a visit to Sheri hills do you?
So come and share your poems and stories with us on day2 and listen to our grand poets and storytellers on day1.
It is loaded and promises to be exciting.
See you there!.....
Please visit www.coalng.blogspot.com for more. Or call 08069166912,
07066590988
Words are powerful, never make them empty.....See you there.

Thursday, 18 June 2015



Are you a poet, singer or story writer who wants to share the depth of what you have in front of an audience? Then COAL's Open Mic is the place to be. No celebrities, no rules nor formalities, just normal people with exceptional minds sharing and enjoying the beauty of art.

COAL's open mic holds this Sunday 21st June 2015, @ Museum Auditorium old zoo Jos, by 2pm.

Open Mic features:


Spoken word

Short stories

Music

Talks

Critique session and more.


If you're up for a performance, just ask for the performance list and wait for your turn.


Note:

- Performance slots will close @ 3:00
- No Vulgar language
- No side talks or any kind of distraction while performances are on
- No rigidity, be fun


It is FREE, EDUCATIVE and ENTERTAINING
Don't come alone.

YOU CAN BOOK FOR A PERFORMANCE SLOT BY CALLING
AP on 08069166912, Daisy 0706 659 0988 or Jenny 0806 899 5644

GIVING CREDENCE TO YOUR VOICE

Monday, 18 May 2015

Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully in Ten Minutes - Stephen King.

I. The First Introduction

THAT'S RIGHT. I know it sounds like an ad for some sleazy writers' school, but I really am going to tell you everything you need to pursue a successful and financially rewarding career writing fiction, and I really am going to do it in ten minutes, which is exactly how long it took me to learn. It will actually take you twenty minutes or so to read this essay, however, because I have to tell you a story, and then I have to write a second introduction. But these, I argue, should not count in the ten minutes.

II. The Story, or, How Stephen King Learned to Write

When I was a sophomore in high school, I did a sophomoric thing which got me in a pot of fairly hot water, as sophomoric didoes often do. I wrote and published a small satiric newspaper called The Village Vomit. In this little paper I lampooned a number of teachers at Lisbon (Maine) High School, where I was under instruction. These were not very gentle lampoons; they ranged from the scatological to the downright cruel.

Eventually, a copy of this little newspaper found its way into the hands of a faculty member, and since I had been unwise enough to put my name on it (a fault, some critics argue, of which I have still not been entirely cured), I was brought into the office. The sophisticated satirist had by that time reverted to what he really was: a fourteen-year-old kid who was shaking in his boots and wondering if he was going to get a suspension ... what we called "a three-day vacation" in those dim days of 1964.

I wasn't suspended. I was forced to make a number of apologies - they were warranted, but they still tasted like dog-dirt in my mouth - and spent a week in detention hall. And the guidance counselor arranged what he no doubt thought of as a more constructive channel for my talents. This was a job - contingent upon the editor's approval - writing sports for the Lisbon Enterprise, a twelve-page weekly of the sort with which any small-town resident will be familiar. This editor was the man who taught me everything I know about writing in ten minutes. His name was John Gould - not the famed New England humorist or the novelist who wrote The Greenleaf Fires, but a relative of both, I believe.

He told me he needed a sports writer and we could "try each other out" if I wanted.

I told him I knew more about advanced algebra than I did sports.

Gould nodded and said, "You'll learn."

I said I would at least try to learn. Gould gave me a huge roll of yellow paper and promised me a wage of 1/2¢ per word. The first two pieces I wrote had to do with a high school basketball game in which a member of my school team broke the Lisbon High scoring record. One of these pieces was straight reportage. The second was a feature article.

I brought them to Gould the day after the game, so he'd have them for the paper, which came out Fridays. He read the straight piece, made two minor corrections, and spiked it. Then he started in on the feature piece with a large black pen and taught me all I ever needed to know about my craft. I wish I still had the piece - it deserves to be framed, editorial corrections and all - but I can remember pretty well how it looked when he had finished with it. Here's an example:

(note: this is before the edit marks indicated on King's original copy)

Last night, in the well-loved gymnasium of Lisbon High School, partisans and Jay Hills fans alike were stunned by an athletic performance unequaled in school history: Bob Ransom, known as "Bullet" Bob for both his size and accuracy, scored thirty-seven points. He did it with grace and speed ... and he did it with an odd courtesy as well, committing only two personal fouls in his knight-like quest for a record which has eluded Lisbon thinclads since 1953....

(after edit marks)

Last night, in the Lisbon High School gymnasium, partisans and Jay Hills fans alike were stunned by an athletic performance unequaled in school history: Bob Ransom scored thirty-seven points. He did it with grace and speed ... and he did it with an odd courtesy as well, committing only two personal fouls in his quest for a record which has eluded Lisbon's basketball team since 1953....

When Gould finished marking up my copy in the manner I have indicated above, he looked up and must have seen something on my face. I think he must have thought it was horror, but it was not: it was revelation.

"I only took out the bad parts, you know," he said. "Most of it's pretty good."

"I know," I said, meaning both things: yes, most of it was good, and yes, he had only taken out the bad parts. "I won't do it again."

"If that's true," he said, "you'll never have to work again. You can do this for a living." Then he threw back his head and laughed.

And he was right; I am doing this for a living, and as long as I can keep on, I don't expect ever to have to work again.

III. The Second Introduction

All of what follows has been said before. If you are interested enough in writing to be a purchaser of this magazine, you will have either heard or read all (or almost all) of it before. Thousands of writing courses are taught across the United States each year; seminars are convened; guest lecturers talk, then answer questions, then drink as many gin and tonics as their expense-fees will allow, and it all boils down to what follows.

I am going to tell you these things again because often people will only listen - really listen - to someone who makes a lot of money doing the thing he's talking about. This is sad but true. And I told you the story above not to make myself sound like a character out of a Horatio Alger novel but to make a point: I saw, I listened, and I learned. Until that day in John Gould's little office, I had been writing first drafts of stories which might run 2,500 words. The second drafts were apt to run 3,300 words. Following that day, my 2,500-word first drafts became 2,200-word second drafts. And two years after that, I sold the first one.

So here it is, with all the bark stripped off. It'll take ten minutes to read, and you can apply it right away ... if you listen.

IV. Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully

1. Be talented

This, of course, is the killer. What is talent? I can hear someone shouting, and here we are, ready to get into a discussion right up there with "what is the meaning of life?" for weighty pronouncements and total uselessness. For the purposes of the beginning writer, talent may as well be defined as eventual success - publication and money. If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.

Now some of you are really hollering. Some of you are calling me one crass money-fixated creep. And some of you are calling me bad names. Are you calling Harold Robbins talented? someone in one of the Great English Departments of America is screeching. V.C. Andrews? Theodore Dreiser? Or what about you, you dyslexic moron?

Nonsense. Worse than nonsense, off the subject. We're not talking about good or bad here. I'm interested in telling you how to get your stuff published, not in critical judgments of who's good or bad. As a rule the critical judgments come after the check's been spent, anyway. I have my own opinions, but most times I keep them to myself. People who are published steadily and are paid for what they are writing may be either saints or trollops, but they are clearly reaching a great many someones who want what they have. Ergo, they are communicating. Ergo, they are talented. The biggest part of writing successfully is being talented, and in the context of marketing, the only bad writer is one who doesn't get paid. If you're not talented, you won't succeed. And if you're not succeeding, you should know when to quit.

When is that? I don't know. It's different for each writer. Not after six rejection slips, certainly, nor after sixty. But after six hundred? Maybe. After six thousand? My friend, after six thousand pinks, it's time you tried painting or computer programming.

Further, almost every aspiring writer knows when he is getting warmer - you start getting little jotted notes on your rejection slips, or personal letters . . . maybe a commiserating phone call. It's lonely out there in the cold, but there are encouraging voices ... unless there is nothing in your words which warrants encouragement. I think you owe it to yourself to skip as much of the self-illusion as possible. If your eyes are open, you'll know which way to go ... or when to turn back.

2. Be neat

Type. Double-space. Use a nice heavy white paper, never that erasable onion-skin stuff. If you've marked up your manuscript a lot, do another draft.

3. Be self-critical

If you haven't marked up your manuscript a lot, you did a lazy job. Only God gets things right the first time. Don't be a slob.

4. Remove every extraneous word

You want to get up on a soapbox and preach? Fine. Get one and try your local park. You want to write for money? Get to the point. And if you remove all the excess garbage and discover you can't find the point, tear up what you wrote and start all over again . . . or try something new.

5. Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft

You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw your thesaurus into the wastebasket. The only things creepier than a thesaurus are those little paperbacks college students too lazy to read the assigned novels buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. You think you might have misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right - and breaking your train of thought and the writer's trance in the bargain - or just spell it phonetically and correct it later. Why not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere? And if you need to know the largest city in Brazil and you find you don't have it in your head, why not write in Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it ... but later. When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

6. Know the markets

Only a dimwit would send a story about giant vampire bats surrounding a high school to McCall's. Only a dimwit would send a tender story about a mother and daughter making up their differences on Christmas Eve to Playboy ... but people do it all the time. I'm not exaggerating; I have seen such stories in the slush piles of the actual magazines. If you write a good story, why send it out in an ignorant fashion? Would you send your kid out in a snowstorm dressed in Bermuda shorts and a tank top? If you like science fiction, read the magazines. If you want to write confession stories, read the magazines. And so on. It isn't just a matter of knowing what's right for the present story; you can begin to catch on, after awhile, to overall rhythms, editorial likes and dislikes, a magazine's entire slant. Sometimes your reading can influence the next story, and create a sale.

7. Write to entertain

Does this mean you can't write "serious fiction"? It does not. Somewhere along the line pernicious critics have invested the American reading and writing public with the idea that entertaining fiction and serious ideas do not overlap. This would have surprised Charles Dickens, not to mention Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Bernard Malamud, and hundreds of others. But your serious ideas must always serve your story, not the other way around. I repeat: if you want to preach, get a soapbox.

8. Ask yourself frequently, "Am I having fun?"

The answer needn't always be yes. But if it's always no, it's time for a new project or a new career.

9. How to evaluate criticism

Show your piece to a number of people - ten, let us say. Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile and nod a lot. Then review what was said very carefully. If your critics are all telling you the same thing about some facet of your story - a plot twist that doesn't work, a character who rings false, stilted narrative, or half a dozen other possibles - change that facet. It doesn't matter if you really liked that twist of that character; if a lot of people are telling you something is wrong with you piece, it is. If seven or eight of them are hitting on that same thing, I'd still suggest changing it. But if everyone - or even most everyone - is criticizing something different, you can safely disregard what all of them say.

10. Observe all rules for proper submission

Return postage, self-addressed envelope, all of that.

11. An agent? Forget it. For now

Agents get 10% of monies earned by their clients. 10% of nothing is nothing. Agents also have to pay the rent. Beginning writers do not contribute to that or any other necessity of life. Flog your stories around yourself. If you've done a novel, send around query letters to publishers, one by one, and follow up with sample chapters and/or the manuscript complete. And remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter pe
rsonal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents.

12. If it's bad, kill it

When it comes to people, mercy killing is against the law. When it comes to fiction, it is the law.

That's everything you need to know. And if you listened, you can write everything and anything you want. Now I believe I will wish you a pleasant day and sign off.

My ten minutes are up.

Saturday, 14 March 2015

Message from a Painting - Oluwatosin Olabode



Oluwatosin Olabode is a Speaker, blogger and writer. Simplicity and Humility are his core values. He's a Christian,  an idealist, a futurist and considers himself a shy guy. Oluwatosi Olabode was one of the five lucky winners of the 'A date with poetry' competition.

Message from a Painting 
I thought I was thinking
Then I realized
My feelings weren't what I was feeling
Because I felt the thought
Didn't think I could feel
The expression I had seen.
She was a painting- stable...
The things she said in her silence
Were beyond the understanding of words spoken
The gentleness on her face was speaking
Yes, talking to me
‘Understand the hurt
And the pain I face
When people can't look
Beyond my face
And see the true me'.
Only when you look deeper
Deeper indeed
Will the expression be understood
I saw pains
As she looks at me
It was explained
In the gentleness of her face
In the silence of her lips
It was more like she wanted to say more
But the words could not come together
The expression on her face said so
In that simple but complex moment
It was like this
Exactly as she said it:
‘Wait... don't tell me
I'm almost here...
The words are about to come out'
The honesty of her spirit
The purity of her spirit
Could be seen at that very first glance
But she was just a painting
So she needed me to talk
Her point being
‘Don't just stare at me,
Understand me'

Wednesday, 11 March 2015

Untitled By Rachel Msendoo Kaase

Msendoo Rachel Kaase is a young writer from Benue state. She was one of the five lucky winners of the 'A date with poetry' competition.

I grew up slow, she grew up way too fast.
She got the Queen Amina role to play,
And I had enough “Yes my Queen” statements to say.
I tried not being jealous,
Putting my mind on being academically zealous.

She wore make-up and dated guys who did regular press ups.
I had of these none,
I secretly knew I was going to turn up a nun,
But this didn't come to pass
I watch myself turn into a simple, ordinary lass,
While she was a belle dinning with the Upper Class.
I was at her bedside after the operation
I don’t want to call it abortion,
Well I just did, she uprooted the seed.
For some days she was depressed
I wanted her to stay that way but nah after days,
She had her depression suppressed.
Back to her carefree life she went,
Soon she returned home again with a gent
She called him her Heaven-sent.
It was no wonder when they exchanged marriage vows
Sweetly said and received loud “wows!”
Off to Spain they traveled, sending pics to me to marvel.
I soon became an aunt.
This triggered my husband hunt, I returned hurt.
And she was there in my state, I was wondering what she was doing here
Her hands clasped on mine,
Her eyes looked into mine,
And her eyes said to mine, “in this entire world, there is no heart for me like thine.”

Tuesday, 3 March 2015

The day I would have lost my mother - Jennifer Dafwat.

Note: To download the audio recording of this poem delivered beautifully by the magnificent Jennifer Dafwat... http://picosong.com/2saR

The day I would have lost my mother
Began as all others
Unseeming, uneventful
Except for those prayers whispered
For all I know
For those I love
All so naive about the rest water the day held
But on all it poured
Extinguishing lives
Drenching wills,
softening hearts
Hardening others
This ode too long to tell
The feeling hit me
Like spikes to the heart
As life from blood flowed
Epitomes of costly arrays
Flayed off carcasses
Off beauties and tans
Making all so sweet
So revolting.

The day I would have
Had me saying I haven't
Thought of worn out spirits
Snatched all too soon
In moments faster than batting eyelids
Placed lids over pots we'll never drink off
Eyelids bat
Opening only to the nocturnal
Activities we of this flesh will for now
not partake in
Pain listless
A blankness in my head and heart
I know not what to call.

Days after
The carnage is still a lingering taste
on everything we touch
Everything we open ourselves to
Everywhere we set our feet for
Streets once alive with cat calls
Sellers wooing buyers
Buyers courting sellers
"Wanting to" buyers
Passing by
Biased or prejudiced
From it all
Sprang the pit fall
That pitched all
Against forces that take much…

Standing at this autumnal column
Looking at what lies ahead
Seeing more of what laid past
Brazen streets now ashen
Inactivity
Thoughts,
dead ghosts,
Now living the activities of this city center
Once a place of constant movements
Twice hit with fatal blows
Somewhere in my mind; I try to picture
If men and women
Will give to buying and
Selling of wares
On streets that are
Streets that were?

When I would have lost my mother
Happened one Monday
Somewhere between afternoon and mid-evening
Disrupting midday Pukam of the Mangus
Calling Ngas from her Forri
Jarawas from their Tere
Berom from plates of Gwote
Challa from mouth watery bubal
Tarok from enjoying Amora
As Plateau caved in
Making space for graves
That sounding of the afternoon gong
that tells of doom
Calling all
To a matter to dire
To wait
As we turned to the twist of fate
That called our loved ones to early beds
Beds hard and cold
The harsh reality of mortal beings.

A DATE WITH POETRY



A DATE WITH POETRY VOL 1


COMES UP THIS SATURDAY 7TH MARCH 2015


FEATURING:        Decipher-  JOGAMA award winning Poet

                         Anchorman- Runner up 2012 ALS National Poetry Slam 

                         Grandsun, Rudolph, Leon, DNA and all COAL Ambassadors. 
Also for the first time, four new poets who scale through COAL's online competition shares the stage with COAL Ambassadors.


MUSIC:           Seken

                          Gold 

                          Mfon
 
                   

VENUE: 

Vintage Art Gallery, Jos.


TIME: 3pm


TICKETS: FREE



BE ON TIME

COAL-   PRESERVING LITERATURE

Thursday, 19 February 2015

NIGHT EJACULATIONS



The grave silence in this ocean of sheets,
Found me in the belly of them,
Twitches of solitude
Itches of morning
Whispers of dark rays
Covers of night.
While the clock ticks
My hair they pick.
Sagging the bags beneath my eyes
As tears dribble down my spine.
Crunches of misery, wavering of time
Sisters of night, lovers of dark
Grant me this plea
For just, a minute slumber, I, desire.
It is 1 am, 2 am, 3 am, 4 am, still no blink.

Names from many tribes and ages given
Sick, insomnia, depression, insanity, illusion, hypnosis
Witcraft, magic, lost, Satanism.
Still, no, sleep,
They are no strangers, not friends
But between the leaves
We fly on a plane quiet and lonely,
I see them, they see me,
We, all, lost in time, lost in us.
It is 1 am, 2 am, 3 am, 4 am, still, no, blink

We were never friends nor foes,
Never hate nor love,
We were ourselves,
Finding solace in this void,
They called and I answered
I fall, they wait for my rising
Like a rasin they cut me before my due date
And I find reason on the bench of their aura
I kiss them with dwindling eyes
Yet we never ejaculate in pleasure land
They stare while I count the white cubes above
tearing my eyes wide,
Tearing pages, scribbling words,
Screening visions and watching my nightmare,
For it is 1 am, 2 am, 3 am, 4 am, still no blink

We were never friends nor foes,
Never hate nor love,
They were me as I was them
Slowly striding the path to light,
Kissing the past on the lips of today.
Munching possibilities with teeth of uncertainties
They are here again
Striding pass my window,
I see them, they see me
Unlocking my soul
To their seduction
Caressing their tender breasts
As they stroke my mind.
Ecstasy of night,
Sweetness of morning
Illness of Noon,

We were never friends nor foes,
We were little creatures,
Finding our path on the misty desert of our bare lives
It is 1 am, 2 am, 3 am, 4 am, still no sleep.


written by Andrew Patience (AP)