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Storyteller, academic, children’s writer and poet, Akuba explains why being ‘in love’ inspires her writing and shares some of her warm and luscious poetry.
March 2007
Akuba
While I enjoy the challenge of writing on any subject that grabs me, either by request or personal choice, I am most motivated to write poetically when ‘in love’, whatever this means. I see creativity and passion as inextricably linked, and as a person who often errs towards everyday pragmatism, poetry writing helps to unleash deeply embedded passions within me.
While some poems engage personally with ‘matters of the heart’, others (including mini narratives) reflect philosophical conversations I have with myself, that I often feel unable to have with others. In the case of my African folktales, I was inspired back in 2003 to start creating my own, after one particular Year 5 male pupil at my son’s former school asked me where he could find my stories to buy. This little boy inspired me because I thought, "if he and others think my work is worthy of being read then who I am to disappoint them"? So the process of writing African-centred folktales began in earnest!
Whether celebratory or gloomy I find the process of writing itself cathartic as it provides me with a positive focus for coping with life’s calamities and challenges. It’s this message I am particularly keen to get out to talented children, youths and adults, especially those who are African-descended. Using writing as a creative tool of empowerment is the best soul booster ever. Never give up your dream, in the face of adversity and struggle, because you can suppress a writer some of the time, but eventually s/he will rise.
Read a selection of Akuba’s poetry for yourself: Conceptualising Love 2, Chester, That Black Ghetto Cat, Sweet Memories, Pineapple and Avocado and Sons.
Biography
Akuba is a Ghanaian-descended single mother of four children, particularly committed to empowering black learners to achieve highly in education. Her poems,Hungry For Mother’s Love, Mothering Lasts Forever, Is There Safety in Self-Denial, and Sexual Emotion are to be published in forthcoming anthologies by Shangwe, 2007. Her proudest achievements are being awarded ‘Aspiring Female Storyteller’ by Black Women in the Arts (2006 & 2007) and winning a writing competition judged by Random House Children’s Books and Malorie Blackman (both in 2006).The Awakening of Elmina is now published in Malorie Blackman’s Unheard Voices; an anthology of slave narratives to commemorate the bicentenary of the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
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