Courttia Newland

Hey everyone,

Much apologies for numerous reasons. First, because I haven’t been posting for a few months, mainly because I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work. I recently went to a reading for James Miller’s new novel Sunshine State (Abacus, buy it!), and some people in the audience were outraged when he said he can’t blog regularly and write books. While I appreciate that some of us have Obama-like time management skills, and have more fingers in pies than Mr Tickle (leave it), I’m not one of them. Writing stories, plays and Novels for me sometimes takes up valuable blogging time. In fact, I’m only doing this right now because I have a window while I wait to hear back on a draft of something. But anyway, I feel that I must apologise for my silence.

Second, I’m saying sorry (instead of apologise – try typing THAT over and over again) because I gave you guys a chunk of the story Underground and then didn’t give any more! I know it’s bad, (very) but I suddenly realised that if i put it up here I can’t enter it for any comps. Therefore my path toward literary greatness is curtailed. So I decided I’d give you guys something else, but then I got inundated halfway through that and… The short version is, the Dog ate it. No, I’m telling fibs. Sorry about that too. I haven’t finished it. Sorry, sorry, sorry. As soon as i have, you’ll get it. Mwah ha ha ha haaaa... I’m also sorry about my wack manic laughter. Next time I’ll be more manic. Promise.

The third sorry is for this inane blog about sorry’s. I always said I’d never write a blog unless I had something to say that doesn’t consist of what I had for breakfast, or the mould in my fridge, or the intense convo I had with another writer over coffee (as if; everyone knows writer’s don’t talk to each other). And here I am going on about saying sorry. It’s rubbish really, I should know better. So sorry about that. It won’t happen again. I’m probably fibbing about that too but there you go. As Robert McCrum said, you can’t trust writers.

Dear Writer,

Courttia Newland, author of the novels The Scholar and Snakeskin, is
starting a series of writing classes specifically aimed at Black
writers called The Collective. These classes aim to provide creative
writing exercises, group tutorials and the reading and dissemination
of published work, in order to help hone your writing craft and
provide the support needed to finish that all important novel, short
story collection, script or play. Writers of all backgrounds and all
levels are more than welcome, however the focus of these classes will
be connecting Black British writers with a wider creative aesthetic,
as well as writing from the African diaspora. Any genre is acceptable,
though the classes are primarily focused on dramatic prose.

Classes will take place on the the third Saturday of every month and
will begin from the 15th May through to the 17th July. This is a fee
paying workshop and so fees for all three workshops must be paid at
the first class. Payments accepted in cash only.

For more details or enquiries please contact Courttia at urbanfactor@gmail.com
.

VENUE: 16mm, D’Arblay St, London W1F 8ED. Closest tube Tottenham Court
Road/Oxford Circus

DATES: 15th May, 19th June, 17th July

TIME: 10.30am-1:30pm

FEE: 90/70 Concs (please bring proof of low income).

It’s with much excitement and pleasure that Afropick is pleased to announce the return of SOUL FOOD. After 5 years away we’re back once again with the aim to ‘feed your mind, nourish your soul’ with ‘a feast of creative expression and talent’. 

It’s hard to believe it has been so long (doesn’t time fly?) but hopefully you’ll remember all the outstanding performers that graced the stage and the warm, chilled out, inspiring and positive family vibes we shared back in the day. It’s this platform and atmosphere we wish to reignite and bring back and hope you can join us.

When you ask? 

Date: Sunday 11 April 2010

Where: Tabernacle, Powis Square W11 2AY(we’re taking it back to the original home) nearest station: Westbourne Park/Ladbroke Grove

Time: Doors 6pm, Show: 7pm (just like back in the day we suggest you arrive early to avoid disappointment)

Adm: £10

Call it what you will; your other family, the black Cheers, your home away from home, your friends … we hope that you can join us as we celebrate the return of SOULFOOD and the show that is a ‘feast of creative expression and talent’

And now for the, hopefully still familiar, blurb …

Pre-heat the occasion with carefully selected mellow grooves and melodies

Take the raw talent of poets: Abraham Gibson, Dexter, Kat Francois, Beyonder, Lyrical Healer and author Courttia Newland and season with wholesome thoughts, organically grown verses and spoken word, along with a pinch of passion and inspiration.

Add the harmonious and sugar sweet vocals of singers: Sean Mitchell, Fola and live band Soul Cyde to the now bubbling poetry mixture and blend until mixture is a smooth consistency.

Then stir in the profuse and pepper hot lyrics of reggae artist: Israel blended with full flavoured beats to complete the unique dish.

Before placing the dish at the table garnish with smiles, laughter and positivity.

Served by hosts: Princess & Rich Blk

Contact:

Jason: 07950 383 296           

Sabrina: 07958 419 082

Princess: 07903 646 031

www.afropick.co.uk

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Please click this link to be navigated to ‘Passive Smoke.’

Did anyone see BBC2′s Culture Show last night?

Firstly, I must say, I was impressed. I’ve watched this show on and off since it aired and have always found it dull, ignorantly opinionated and elitist, but last night I watched with great interest. Kevin Spacey was great on his stint as Artistic Director of the Old Vic, Peter Jackson equally so about his latest book adaptation, The Lovely Bones and the use (or overuse) of CGI in film. I even discovered the helter-skelter views of superstar philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, which I found fresh and intriguing. By far the best edition of the show I’ve seen.

It was also great to see a rare Roots Manuva interview, and hear Chris Ofili talk about his latest  show at the Tate Britain. I’m in awe of both pretty much equally when it comes to the art they produce. My only gripe (yes, you guessed it – there is one!) was the fact that The Culture Show chose to play a smattering of Dr Dre tracks as an accompaniment to Ofili’s art! Now, I like Dre’s music, but where’s the link? Oh sorry, I get it – Ofili is Black, and was in part inspired by Hip Hop, AND produced work drawn from his time spent in a King Cross studio; so there MUST be some link between Dre’s late nineties G-music and Ofili’s fusion of traditional African art with Western abstract painting. Of course!

This was the only lazy point of a really interesting programme, and only serves to highlight the fact that as Black British artists, we still have a hard time getting the mainstream to understand who we are and what we do. I’m very disappointed with the director, because had he been more alert to the artist’s work and the underlying Black British aesthetic displayed in paintings such as No Woman No Cry, he would have realised that the soundtrack could not be married with the visuals. The oversight was not overtly racial, but cultural ignorance helped to produce a genuine artistic mistake.

It’s not always that way. Many years ago I gave an interview for BBC1′s BookWorm. During the edit, the director rang me saying they’d tried to fit Dre’s music over the piece, but it just wasn’t working. The rhythms were all wrong. He asked if I could recommend any British Hip Hop and I supplied a long list that included Rodney P, Roots Manuva and many others… He ended up using the UK music and it was a perfect fit. It would be great if in future people thought a little deeper, not settle for cultural shortcuts that have very little merit, or meaning.

I’m coming to the end of a three week stint  in the West Indies tomorrow (Barbados, the place of my mother’s birth – I know, I know… I’ll try not to crow too hard UK-based people) and of course, I’ve loved being here. The sun is just the way I like it, the food like I remember my Gran-Gran used to make, and the sea water crisp, warm and clear. I really could get used to wearing a t-shirt late into the night. You can understand why people fall in love with this place.  

People who know me might be waiting for me to get into the history of this island and all the others, and although that’s relevant I’m not going there today. Since Jan 12th 2010, when the unthinkable happened in Haiti, I’ve witnessed first hand the camaraderie between Barbados and our brothers and sisters across the ocean; and I’ve no doubt that this empathy is being displayed throughout the Caribbean. You know who your friends are when times are hard, and this amazing response is an example to us all. Yes, it’s true that the entire world has stood up and been counted, but I can’t help being proud of the Caribbean. Our show of unity in the face of this disaster is a positive way forward in good times, as well as sad.

My good friend Abdul Ali has plenty more to say on the subject of Haiti. Please check out his site at Words Matter, which can be found in my Links. With his kind permission I’d like to reproduce a poem from his page. Please circulate the below if you feel moved by this piece.

______

Passing this along from Split This Rock’s Poem of the Week Archive:

Mud Mothers

the children of haiti
are not mythological
we are starving
or eating salty cakes
made of clay

because in 1804 we felled
our former slave captors
the graceless losers sunk
vindictive yellow
teeth into our forests

what was green is now
dust & everyone knows
trees unleash oxygen
(another humble word
for life)

they took off
with our torn branches
beheaded our future
stuck our breath up on pikes
for all the world to see

we are a living dead example
of what happens to warriors who―
in lieu of fighting for white men’s countries―
dare to fight
for their own lives

during carnival
we could care less
about our bloated empty bellies
where there are voices
we are dancing

where there is vodou
we are horses
where there are drums
we are possessed
with joy & stubborn jamboree

but when the makeshift
trumpet player
runs out of rhythmic breath
the only sound left is guts
grumbling

& we sigh
to remember
that food
& freedom
are not free

is haiti really free
if our babies die starving?
if we cannot write our names
read our rights keep
our leaders in their seats?

can we be free
really? if our mothers are mud? if dead
columbus keeps cursing us
& nothing changes
when we curse back

we are a proud resilient people
though we return to dust daily
salt gray clay with hot black tears
savor snot cakes
over suicide

we are hungry
creative people
sip bits of laughter
when we are thirsty
dance despite

this asthma
called debt
congesting
legendarily liberated
lungs

- Lenelle Moïse

Lenelle Moïse hailed “a masterful performer” by GetUnderground.com, is an award-winning “culturally hyphenated pomosexual” poet, playwright and performance artist. She creates jazz-infused, hip-hop bred, politicized texts about Haitian-American identity and the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, spirituality and resistance. In addition to featured performances in venues as diverse as the Louisiana Superdome, the United Nations General Assembly Hall and a number of theatres, bookstores, cafes and activist conferences, Lenelle regularly performs her acclaimed autobiographical one-woman show WOMB-WORDS, THIRSTING at colleges across the United States.

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Moïse will be featured at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 10-13, 2010, in Washington, DC. The festival will present readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism – four days of creative transformation as we imagine a way forward, hone our community and activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change. For more information: info@splitthisrock.org.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

This poem is reprinted from Split This Rock’s blog–where you can find other great poems and poetry news <http://blogthisrock.blogspot.com>

LED BIB, TOBY LITT, CATHI UNSWORTH, COURTTIA NEWLAND, visuals from ‘HUZZAH!! NOIR’

For bookings please click here:

A night of criminal fiction, comic art and music of a darker hue. Enter a world where lunch is drunk from the bottle and murder smells like honeysuckle. In Toynbee Theatre’s art deco, velvet auditorium, four authors present a selection of bleeding-edge crime stories, intercut with animated chapters of online, collaborative comic strip ‘Huzzah!! Noir’. Illicit jazz comes from 2009 Mercury nominated ensemble Led Bib, providing improvised and composed response, putting on to simmer a suitably hard-boiled soundtrack. Author and journalist Toby Litt reads from his forthcoming novel King Death. Darting between dingy student pubs, the roofs of Borough Market and the corridors of Guy’s Hospital, it’s a mystery set in the world of young medical students. A human heart found on the tube leads two young investigators on a trail that leads to the hospital’s infamous dissection lecturer – known as ‘King Death’.

Cathi Unsworth, editor of London Noir, reads from her new novel. Set against the background of 1960s London, ‘Bad Penny Blues’ plums the murky depths of the unsolved Jack the Stripper murders in which the bodies of eight working girls were found in or along the Thames. Sixties London explodes in all its ferocious colour: jazz and pop, fascists and Teds, migrants, mystery and one constable Pete Bradley caught in the middle. A tender paean to the city, this is a novel with a twisted mystery at its heart.

West London native Courttia Newland delights in the dark and the uncanny. Drawing inspiration from everything from traditional horror movies via Roald Dahl to everyday life in West London, Newland brings together the literary and the pop cultural in a reading from his collection of grotesque short stories, ‘Music for the Off-Key’. Stylish pulp-fiction given a modern, capital twist.

“Dark, compelling, twisted and grim in all the best ways possible”- Niall Griffiths on Courttia Newland

“Litt rocks!” – Sunday Times on Toby Litt

“smart noir entertainment with the bitter aftertaste of truth” – The Financial Times on Bad Penny Blues

“The future of jazz” – The Times on Led Bib

Please click on this link to read.