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Poetry brings me closer to myself – Ahmad Abdulsamad

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In the third of series of interviews with winners of the PW second anniversary poetry contest, Salim Yunusa interviews Ahmad Abdulsamad, poet and Environmental activist. Poetic Wednesdays recently celebrated its second year of founding. Can you tell us what impact being a member of this online poetry movement has made in your literary journey? Wow! PW has really been an enabling platform for me to learn and develop as a poet, all thanks to its very colourful network of poetic minds. I am definitely not the poet I used to be before the PW experience. Some very dear poets I met on PW have unlocked a lot of my poetic ice walls and closed roads. So, it's really safe to say PoeticWednesdays has been a major influence in my evolution as a poet. I can't be thankful enough for that. What can you say about online Literary Movements and the impacts they make? They are really doing great. Until recently, poetry has largely been regarded as a grotesque, banal and unin

Poet-Today | Abdulrahman Mohammed Abu-Yaman | The Arts-Muse fair

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LIFE AND TIMES OF SHAMGBO GBARA Shamgbo , the primus inter pares of Gbara land . Not to be confused   with Sango - the god of thunder in Yoruba land . Synonymous to both was their in-built thunder. Unlike the latter, Shamgbo - my maternal grandpa was a   calm thunder. His words were as soft as silk but as sagacious as Solomon's. The light skinned old man had the three famed Nupe tribal marks on both sides of his cheeks striped keener to his mouth diagonally. Visiting Shamgbo from far away, he would crack jokes with Yadogi , my brother, about an imaginary eya-fiti he promised to gift him but yet to touchdown despite squillions of naira expended on its proposed runways. Shamgbo had a small square-sized parlour small enough not be rectangular but large enough to accommodate millions of hearts Antiquities and mishmash of ancient paraphernalia were clustered in the living room. Shamgbo while lounging on his spring

Goethe-Institut Nigeria announces its 2018 Support and Connect Grants projects

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The Goethe-Institut Nigeria has announced a list of seven projects to be funded in its 2018 Open Call to Support and Connect local initiatives in the Nigerian cultural scene. The seven successful projects were selected from a pool of high -quality projects submitted after the open call. Foto: Goethe-Institut / Olanrewaju Orisunmibare /Jeremiah Ikongio © The selected projects span the creative spectrum of music, film, theatre, arts journalism, poetry, gaming and the local comic scene. Below are the winning projects.  ·          Film Sundays ·          Golden Tones: Conversations with living legends of Nigerian Music ·          Lagos Comic-Con ·           Lagos International Poetry Festival ·          Theatre Arise Project ·          TSA Art Writing Master Class ·          West African Gaming Expo Gothe-Institut while regretting that only a few projects could be supported from amongst the many submitted, it pledged to continue its Support and Connect Grants,

Call for Participation | MultiChoice Talent Factory (MTF)

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If you frame your world through camera angles, narrate reality like a movie script, and edit the montage of your life like a film director, then here’s a flash-forward into your future – MultiChoice Africa is calling all aspiring film directors, DOPs, sound guys, and scriptwriters to enter for the MultiChoice Talent Factory (MTF) and help ignite Africa’s creative industries. Who knows, perhaps one day your name will be rolling across the closing credits on DStv channels.  MultiChoice Africa is recruiting aspiring African talent to gain theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience in cinematography, film editing, audio production and storytelling. Sixty talented students from 13 African countries will get the chance to hone their film and television production skills alongside industry greats. This year-long, funded, programme will be supported by MultiChoice Talent Factory academies hosted in Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia. Students will create quality local content that will be b

Call for Submissions | 2018 All Africa Music Awards

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The All Africa Music Awards (AFRIMA) invites entry submissions for the annual continental music awards.  From May 25 to August 1, 2018, the 5th edition of AFRIMA will be receiving on its online portal  www.afrima.org , works, songs and videos recorded or produced by African music professionals and publicly released within the eligibility period of August 1, 2017 to August 1, 2018. These entries will compete for possible nomination by the AFRIMA Jury in one or more of the 36 categories of the awards. The AFRIMA Jury, consisting of 13 members, with vast experience and practice in African music and culture is charged with overseeing the AFRIMA Adjudication process to ensure a thorough and fair screening, categorizing, assessing and selecting process of AFRIMA 2018 nominees. Nominees are expected to emerge to populate the Regional and Continental awarding categories of AFRIMA in different genres of music ranging from African contemporary to electro, traditional, reggae/ragga

Call for Entries | 2019 Sony World Photography Awards

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Photo credit: Aminu S Muhammad, 2018 The World Photography Organization  invite all photographers to enter the  2019 Sony World Photography Awards . Celebrating the finest contemporary photography from the past year, the Awards are FREE to enter and offer amazing prizes, vast exposure, visibility, and opportunities to photographers worldwide.    CHOOSE BETWEEN FOUR COMPETITIONS ·          Professional   - outstanding bodies of work between 5-10 images across ten categories ·          Open  -   rewarding the world’s best single images across ten categories ·          Youth   -   a single brief for emerging talent aged 12-19 ·          Student   - for photography students across the globe BRAND NEW CATEGORIES   The 2019 Awards sees the introduction of two challenging new categories in the Professional competition:  Brief  and  Documentary .  Brief  asks photographers to compose a body of work on a specific theme. The inaugural theme for this year is "Identit

Kenyan, 2 Nigerian writers in Iseyin for Ebedi Writers Residency

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Three writers, a Kenyan and two Nigerians are in Iseyin, Oyo State for the May/June 2018 Ebedi Writers Residency Session. They are; Troy Onyango,  Socrates Mbamalu and T J Benson. Troy Onyango is a Kenyan writer and Lawyer. His fiction has appeared in various journals and magazines including Transition Magazine Issue 121, for which his short story 'The Transfiguration' was nominated for the 2016 Pushcart Prize. His short story 'For What Are Butterflies Without Their Wings?' won the fiction prize for the inaugural Nyanza Literary Festival Prize. He was shortlisted for the 2016 Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship. He is a Founding Editor of Enkare Review – a Nairobi-based literary magazine and the Fiction Editor of the East Africa issue of Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel. Troy will be using his time at Ebedi to complete work on his novel, tentatively titled The Sound of a Dream. He will also mentor secondary school students in Iseyin in the area