The Arts-Muse Fair

There is no one secret to reading a poem, but the closest I know is to think of it as a journey. Where are the thoughts, the sounds, and the feelings coming from, and where do they land? ‘Each word is a step on the road’, Patsy Rodenburg (who is a voice coach at the British National Theatre) often tells student actors. To give words to an audience,   she says, you have to feel the “journey of thought” in them and the shape they take. “Try walking”, she tells the student-actor, ‘the journey of the poem’.  In life, too, poems and journeys go together. Both move. Both take a bit of time and effort. Both let you reflect on other things as you go on. Both can upset and surprise you. There may be boring moments or moments that seem boring at the time, but afterwards, you realise they were crucial. Both give you new windows on the world and take you out of yourself, but let you go deeper into yourself at the same time. They get you to new places. So what is the journey of reading a poem? Ther

The Hausa International Book and Arts Festival, HIBAF, put together by Open Arts, is set to hold in Kaduna from the 21st to the 23rd of October, 2021. The new and exciting festival will welcome guests like Balaraba Ramat, Ado Gidan Dabino, Prof. Asabe Kabir, Prof. Ibrahim Malumfashi, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, Ismail Bala, Hakeem Baba- Ahmed, BM Dzukogi and many others. Panels and discussions will highlight Hausa Literature; writings, spoken words, poetry, films, and even matters of security in Northern Nigeria. According to the Curator, Sada Malumfashi, HIBAF was created out of the “need to provide adequate representation for the booming Hausa literary field in the global conversation about books and literature” When asked about his vision for the festival, Malumfashi replied that his hope was for HIBAF to serve as a “melting point for the celebration of language in Northern Nigeria and across Africa” He added that he hoped that the festival will re-affirm the literary merit of writers in