Every Saturday during the school year, children of African and Afro-Caribbean descent come to the West Indian Centre on Carmoor Road in Manchester for supplementary tuition in Mathematics and English with a black cultural slant. At the centre, we believe that children of this background do not receive sufficient grounding in their historical reality from the National Curriculum, hence the supplementary classes.

As part of the Ghost Project, pupils between the ages of 11- 14 years were given photographs of black life in Moss Side between the 1950s to the 1970s. They especially looked at the intriguing structure of the infamous and now demolished Crescent Flats in Hulme, but they also chose pictures that interested them. Here is their imagination, in poetry and prose, of the Disappearing Histories of Moss Side.

Special thanks to Martin De Mello who asked the school to take part; Washington Alcott (Head of the Supplementary School) who provided the fascinating photographs that brought the past into the class; and finally, to Devon Pinnock (Maths Tutor) for his enthusiasm and assistance towards the smooth running of the classes.

Jennifer Makumbi-Morris (English Tutor)

Please click on the students’ names to see their poems.

Nelson Kofi
Tauzeni Vanessa
Tauzeni Tasha
Abbisai Amba
Azeez Usman
Kirabo Razik

“Captain underpants is actually called Mr. Krupp he is hypnotised to think that he is a super-hero. When ever Mr. Krupp hears the sound of fingers snapping he turns into captain underpants and turns back into Mr. Krupp when water is poured on his head.”
The author and illustrator of this book is called Dav Pillkey. He published the book in 1997

Childhood Life

During my time of childhood
I lived in Moss Side.
I remember the toys I played with
and the food I ate.

In 1999 when I was 6
I remember one Christmas eve
I heard a knock at the door, a man came in and went straight into the living room.

I snuck down stairs
looked into the living room;
it was a man in a red suit with a white and red hat and a white beard.

I thought to my self its Santa its Santa but
then I saw the strings attached to his beard
and from that night
I never believed in Santa again.

Princess Road is a very popular road
but since December, I understand it is very cold,
not all people have been visiting or shopping here
compared to before, now I am thinking very clear.

I don’t know if it is because I am black
or is it the ‘unwell treated’?
Shop next to me called Noah’s Ark.
Is it because I have replaced it with my own African jewellery
Or is it because I have changed my shop so surprising?

I don’t know what’s wrong
but I intend to carry on and be very strong
My shop is cheaper
unlike the other one it is brighter.
Imagine how cheap my shop is but still
I don’t get enough bill.
I am black African and proud
But still get sucked to the ground

I need some customers to keep living
but now I think I’ve stopped believing
I don’t get a lot of credit around here
that is why I am moving back over there.

Each month I get fewer customers
all because of those life stealing betrayers.
During the time I am living here
I keep dreaming of living over there.
I realise it is not me it is them
and their black people’s problem
Just because I am coloured and they’re not
That called racism, I’ve been told.

I can’t afford a text book
I have to buy food
Turn the oven on and cook
My kids can’t have a good education
I don’t get why there is complication

I tell you why I haven’t stayed here
And I have moved back over there!!!

Bleaching My Skin

The celebrating had started and I was so proud to have said that I was part of that ceremony. I was holding the big, shiny and bold star which represented us blacks being bright and different. But when I was holding that star I started to think about the following year, if my life would be better or it would be exactly the same.

The dancing girls had started to get my attention I wanted to come in and join them but apparently I wasn’t allowed to wear a mini skirt. Everyone was cheering on the parade and it was such a phenomenal feeling to see that some whites where there in the crowd cheering for the freedom of blacks. I don’t know if the people in the south are having as much luck as we are right now in the North West.

Problems started happening after this day. I tried to get a nice home for myself because I wanted to start a family but all they had in stock for me seemed to look exactly like the sewer. I took it anyway thinking that when I get a reasonable job I’ll be able to pimp it up a little bit. When I was young wanted to be a doctor but my teacher told me to give up on my dream that no-one of my colour would get that kind of occupation. He told me I could be a singer, a dancer or a runner. I wanted to prove him wrong so I set off to find the job with my name on it. Every hospital I went to and asked for a job just laughed in my face and threw me out.

I wonder if you can bleach your skin. I’m tired of being black my family tells me to start being proud of who I am but I’m not. I bought that skin changer lotion but I doesn’t seem to work I‘m still black after 3 weeks of bleaching not one single change to my skins I was so disappointed.

Then my skin started to get light patches and I tried to get my skin even again. I looked in the mirror and I would not recognise myself anymore. I am changing from Orewa Fefe Olawafakumi to Toby Barret. I started to think I should not change what God created me as. I should be proud of who I am and not change for any one. Started to cry in the damp of my bed. I would have loved to be in my mum’s arm again.

Moss Side Days

I remember those days like yesterday,
the way I played in the industrial city
and had to watch out
for dangerous object
that might hit me from high above

CRESCENT BLOCKS

The sunshine was bright through the window.

As I got out of bed,
I realised
I was in the old run down slum I call my home.

As I went to wash my face I was welcomed
by icy water

I turned off the tap and got dressed
I walked out of my front door
it creaked closed behind me.

I could hear the mice run across the narrow
Corridor.

Wonder Crescent

Some of the time I spent
at the crescent was fantastic.
I loved the food
and the people were lovely.

Then I started to notice
the wallpaper peeling off walls.

But it wasn’t just me:
some people even had rats
helping themselves to the food.
Overnight, very quickly
people started leaving,
children started vandalising
and spraying and stealing.

The crescent was destroyed, a wonder
no more,
it was a broken crescent.

My Taxi
(Demolition)

I just finished washing the china plates
my mum got me from Canada
when I heard a devastating crash.

I went out to see what all the commotion was about.
There
was my precious taxi

smashed by the demolished brick building.

People were staring to check if
anyone was in there and

I remember I asked a neighbour
to get my papers from the taxi
and there
beside the rubble, and my taxi

lay dead my neighbour.
Usman Azeez

They were built 42 years ago; sadly they were too weak to last too long. Hulme ASDA has taken over. The Crescent lasted
20 years you know. They were named Crescent
because they curved like the
Crescent moon. If I were
Alive then
I would
visit
them
every
noon.
The block
was so long
that they would fit over
a million people into the block. Most of
the people that lived there were poor. Loads of gangs wanted
to sell. They only wanted money. Out of these would mean billions.

CRESCENT BLOCKS

The houses are dirty and rough, the streets are full of rubble and rats.
There is nothing to do on the weekends, just listening to police sirens:
mum will not let me out because of the drugs and violence.

There’s a certain blinding stench, a scene so ugly, so disgusting.
The place stinks like dead rats and expired food
I day dream about a beautiful place I will live in
the birds will be singing and floating in the air like a feather.
The scene will be so peaceful; it will smell like roses and strawberries.

To be honest, I think my dream will become my future,
but till then I’m going to have to wait.
I have loads of friends because my school was too small, but it was also expensive
Mum worked very hard for her money, and we had to pay taxes and the landlord
So now I’m going to have to get a job as soon as I leave high school.

Starting with what to read, normally the advice is to identify writers whose style is similar to your own and who are writing in the same field, especially those that have recently been published. The received wisdom is that you have to check out the competition – what subjects they are tackling and how they handle them – so that you can avoid duplication. And just as importantly, are there any gaps in the field that you can slot your writing in to, to give it an edge? There is also the matter of style and structure, again paying attention to what has come out recently, in order to help fashion your own unique style.

Looking at how to read, practitioners advise writers to read form rather than content: reading how the piece works rather than what it means. Writing to novelists Sarah Harris said, “When we read other fictional works, as writer, we read them de facto instruction manual for technique, style, structure and thematic possibility.

While this ‘common sense’ approach undoubtedly has merit it has an unfortunate side effect: publishing, like the fashion industry, is dominated by trends. And these trends are often reinforced by reading. What excites publishers, and what it is in their interests for us as writers to read, drives the industry. It should come as no surprise then that anyone operating outside these self appointed judgements, for that is what they are, is likely to struggle to find interest. Once, while I was searching for agents, two agents, who had rejected my novel, told me that for ‘ethnic’ writing publishers were looking for hybrid subjects – stories that straddle both the ‘exoticism’ of the Third World and the familiar milieu of the Western metropolis. In other words I should be reading and writing books like Brick Lane, The Icarus Girl and The Kite Runner.

Leaving aside the extent to which this holds the literary imagination hostage, I am wary of trends for the simple reason that they are fickle and they date your writing, giving it a short shelf-life. This is not always a problem. For genre writing, where short shelf-lives are often the norm and there is a large, multi-niched audience, trends can be challenging and exciting, stimulating new conversations and (for the genre) ideas. But even here, as trends become exhausted a waiting game develops. It is a brave writer that in the current climate writes a book about wizards and vampires, but as to what replaces them the new trend has not yet come fully into view.

This presents a serious obstacle for much literary and less genre specific fiction, particularly for texts that have long gestation periods and few prefabricated reference points. Even themes and concerns that appear to have been around for long periods run out of steam. I have a feeling that immigration and its attendant motifs of cosmopolitanism, identity crises, nomadism etc, is getting tired; in part a result of the lingering economic depression and the weariness with immigration into the west at a time of austerity. I am working (on and off) on a collection of short stories on immigration which, I fear, by the time I finish them might be out of fashion. My best shot is to send them ‘home’ to Uganda for publication: immigration is still romanticised in Africa. The question then becomes: how will they be received? The answer to this is not straightforward, but as a writer contemplating publishing ‘back home’ it pays to know what back home is currently interested in. Which means reading again, this time based on local writing, but with the same concerns outlined above: what topics and themes are being published and how are they being handled? There is also a similar but ironically reversed concern for language use.

As an example of what this may mean, I am beginning to sense that empire bashing, for postcolonial writing, is starting to fatigue readerships, especially in the Third World where masses are living under tyrannical regimes. My father’s generation, which sang the “song of fire…at the colonial dusk” (from Yet Another Song, David Rubadiri) and then watched as their dreams went up in flames, have no patience with postcolonial sentiments. Their view is, if our own people are brutal to us now, how can we blame European colonisers of long ago? Western readers too are getting bold, asking: “Are you saying nothing good came out of colonisation?” It is a tentative question but a pertinent one. For a World Literature writer (the preferred term these days – postcolonial is both exclusive and fixes relationships strictly in European terms) an awareness of these shifts in the cultural-political interests of your potential readership is a necessity, as prevalent ideas and understandings are rethought.

Many novels about Africa and Asia written in the West travel back to the worlds they depict and are rejected by local readerships because they are seen as distorted representations. The problem is that immigrant writers keep the picture of home as they left it so many years ago. But culture is like a river, it flows constantly. (Ngugi wa Thiongo) Your home country is no longer what it was when you left. It is called cultural currency. I have nothing to say to writers who write about real places or cultures they have never visited. But I know one thing; there is no wrath like a people misrepresented. Where, as a writer, you must be careful is to not stifle your own innovation and learning by becoming caught in the either/or of two worlds: back home and here. To not misrepresent does not mean to slavishly copy the styles and structures of the writing being produced in the society you address. World literature is a conversation, an opening and widening of possibilities. A learning experience.

I am working on a novel set in Africa dealing with inheritance of sin and perpetuation of curse. I read recently published African novels and novels set in the Third World. Recently, I picked up Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth, where she handles historicity and reincarnation, to see how she structures the past against the present. I learnt that when dealing with history, short chapters work best. Readers hate a barrage of historical facts. I noticed this when I read Nadifa Mohammed’s Black Mamba Boy: her long paragraphs and protracted chapters made the novel seem mountainous. Consequently, I restructured my novel. As a result, shorter chapters look and read better. Also, Mosse’s simplicity of language taught me that when dealing with a complex subject, it is best to make language as accessible as possible. Despite the distance between Mosse’s French world and my African one, reading her Labyrinth enhanced my writing.

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Full programme for the day (please click)

Tickets available from Quay Tickets

Get an in-depth look at how key black and Asian writers got publishing deals, and how major spoken word artists developed their careers. The day’s programme includes panels, Q&A and informal ‘salon’ sessions looking at social media and writers, and Reading Habits of Writers, as well as lots of opportunities to network.

Followed by an evening’s entertainment featuring the Speakeasy band, Young Authors and Poets and special guest Kei Miller.

Find us on facebook here

Venue:

Zion Arts Centre
335 Stretford Road
Hulme
Manchester
M15 5ZA

Summary as follows:

11-12pm
Spoken Word: What Next? The Way Forward
Poetry Futures

12pm-1pm
The Book is Dead. Long Live The E-Book
Ebooks and social media

1pm – 2pm
Salon Session
Salon Host: Segun Lee French

2pm-3pm
Writing For Children & Diversity: Why Are So Few BME Writers Published In This Genre?

3pm -4pm:
How To Get Your Novel Published

4pm-5pm
Salon session
Salon Host: Jennifer Makumbi

Evening Show begins 7.30pm

Tickets available here, prices as follows:

Standard : Conference only £20 / Conference + evening event £25
Concession (unwaged/student) : Conference only £10 / Conference + evening event £15

Standard : Evening only £10
Concession (unwaged/student) : Evening only £5

For more information contact conf@cultureword.org.uk