The journey is littered with burnt out tanks.  In the early nineteen hundreds the Italians came.  They built roads and bridges and beautiful art deco buildings all over Eritrea.  They also brought apartheid.  Nowhere in my African travels, North West east and South,   has the scramble for Africa been so evident.  The British bombed the Italian infrastructure. Russians provided tanks to attack eritrea and the cold war was fought out in the hottest part of east Africa.  How anyone could sit in a tank in this heat is beyond me.   Finally, in 1995,  the Eritreans won their independence. But by that time there was very little to win but pride.

We pass the Roman Baths, now a shell were once the Itlaians bathed in the natural warm springs of massawa,  past the broken down train station. These are all ruins.  And as darkness falls, Massawa.   The Journalist and I find an hotel .  Massawa is hot. The breeze is hot. The red sea  which we shall swim in,  is hot. There is nothing here that is not hot.

It is a marvel to see these people, my people. I see my shape of face in the men everywhere and I see the face of my mother, my sisters and brothers, my aunts and uncles and my father. It’s a beautiful thing. The sun is relentless, darkening my skin as I marvel at our likeness. Soon enough I am darkened into one of my own people and become as unnoticeable as I have always wanted to be.   more »

I realise how famous The Journalist is when I see her stood in front of this adoring and critical audience. The British council lay on an excellent spread of food and drink. The PA is perfect and they have to be commended for doing such an accomplished job. But most of all Gisella, the pregnant background woman and “wife of diplomat” who is the real force for good in this entire story and without whom none of this would have happened.   more »

That he speaks in English, not his first language, makes the sentences sound sharp as they are without the subtleties and nuances language requires to eventually deliver its aim. Instead the sentences arrive at their goal abruptly. “so... you have written a book”. it leaves us to interpret nuance.   more »

Today I am leaving London for here Eritrea. I am traveling with The Journalist.

Shit I am tired. I feel like the life has been sucked out of me and evenly distributed into bland grey bottes on every shelf of a vast wharehouse that has my name at the entrance. I can walk up and down the aisles of myself and every bottle is the same.   more »

I made a thirty minute BBC TV documentary on the search for the fathers side of the famly. It is now on youtube in three parts. It is called Internal Flight and you can watch it in three ten minute sections here .    more »

Everything is go. Chuck D has confirmed as part of my Literature By Any Means series of events to be launched in October. he shall be here in London on 10th October.   more »

The plane was delayed so last night I stayed at a hotel in johanesburg airport.   Roger Robinson, the author and Hannah Henderson of British Council stayed too.  We are  all tired and wanting home. But I learned something about myself. When I get tired  I simply shut down.  I am at home in England tonight by 11.30pm. Thank god for The Journalist.

It is a small and peaceful country. The ex presidents wife is here and the presidents wife is in the audience. I cut my set down from twenty minutes to ten. It’s a dynamic, thunderous gig, a bit storm like.   more »

Okay so the approach by someone called Naomi Cambell may be spurious, but this isn't. The Gilt of Cain is a poem of mine upon a sculpture by Michael Vissochi. It ism erected in the heart of The City of London and was a commission by The City. Today I got a call to say that The Gilt of Cain will be unveiled by Bishop Desmond Tutu on September 4th . It is wonderful and incredible news to receive while here in Southern Africa. It means the Bishop or his people have read the poem.   more »

I met an anthropologist novelist at the vancouver literature festival in Canada who told me that our need to feel close to fear is a basic instinct. The more man is comfortable, the more he needs fear. A physical representation of fear is the hypothalamus gland. This gland which gives us goosepumps and relates directly to when man had hair upon his body.   more »

“welcome everybody to the word, the sound and the Power in the Voice festival. first and foremost please welcome onto the stage the one and the only ....”And I remind myself of the first person who was on that list without looking at the paper... the name escapes me for a second so I use a descriptive word “the incredible....” and at last it came to me “The Dogfather...”. The crowd whoop and holler. The only problem was The Dogfather was not there.    more »

I’ve toured throughout Africa. But who are the new generation of poets? I am fascinated to see what the subject matters and styles will be.   more »

Get packed. Get taxi. get to airport. Get on plane. Get to meet Roger Robinson. Get into air. Get to talk until evening. get to sleep for a couple of hours. Arrive next day in the morning in Botswana.  get to hotel.

LET THERE BE PEACE

 

Let there be peace

So  frowns fly away like albatross

And skeletons foxtrot from cupboards:

So war correspondants become travel show presenters

And  magpies bring back lost property

Children, engagement rings, broken things.

 

Let there be peace

So storms can go out to sea to be

angry and  return to me calm:

So the broken can rise and dance in the hospitals.

Let the aged Ethiopian man in the grey block of  flats 

Peer through his window and see Addis  before him

Let his thrilled outstretched arms become frames

For his dreams.

 

Let there be peace.

Let tears evaporate  to form clouds, cleanse themselves

And fall into reservoirs of drinking water.

Let  harsh  memories  burst into fireworks that melt,

in the dark pupils of a child’s  eyes

And disappear   like shoals of darting silver fish.

And let the waves reach the shore with a

Shhhhhhhhhh  shhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhhhh.

 

 

The week is up and running smoothly . Only five or so days to go and I’ll be in Botswana. On Tuesday I visited the Eritrean embassy for visa and had the pleasure of a one hour conversation with the Eritrean Ambassador. And on Wednesday I'm in The New Zealand Herald.   more »

And so it is here that I have grown addiction. Writing has all the traits of addiction. And addiction has the qualities of the eye of the storm. The calm timeless centre.   more »

The fall is dramatic and the bang on the back of my head feels severe as my entire body collapses onto the floor. I lie in shock realising that something very bad has happened. I ask myself questions Where am I? You’re at the hotel. What happened? You just slipped on that polished floor I think. Should I get up? No you shouldn’t lay there. Am I bleeding? Feel your head. No you are not bleeding. Shall I get up? No, not yet.   more »

The floor is polished wood and my Italian shoes slide beneath me, forward and swing upwards while my back keels backwards to become the first thing that hits the floor with a hotel shuddering crash that seemed to echo through the cellars beneath.   more »