Powerful Poetry Reading at SPC

We had a great program. Five poets (all dynamic & electrifying performers) and three open mic poets (dynamic too). The room was packed, with some of our audience members standing the whole time. Not too bad for a rainy and chilly night. The reading started at 7:30 and ended at 9:45. Powerful readings get me too excited and I know I will try to spend the a great chunk of the night using the inspiration. That's why I like hosting readings; they act as fuel for creativity. So now I am here thinking about how great the readings were, trying to replay it all over, thinking, perhaps I should revise the poems in "A House for Mother", then finish that one short story about two free-lance journalists who flash their press cards to get service everywhere they go, until they do it in Chimanimani and no one knows what they are doing...., or perhaps post an update about how I am happy about what everyone else is doing: Petina Gappah's official Faber website is up, Ignatius Mabasa and Memory Chirere won the NAMA for their Shona works, and so I connect this with what that one poet, SAY OUR HISTORY, said about how he dated a girl from Zambia and felt bad that although he has an "African" in his "African-American" marker he could not speak a word of any African language, and how he tried to learn the girlfriend's language, and then wasn't able to master it, thereby getting inspired to write the poem he shared with us tonight...and...and, V.S. Chochezi, also dwelling on identity, saying be yourself, as African as you can be, because you are African; then, well, thinking, why not just switch to one of my draft short stories, the one that I keep changing, about a landlady in Budiriro, Harare, who does not allow dogs and children at her house, which means if you are a lodger you cannot have either of these two creatures; but each time I complete a draft, the final product seems too unrealistic, and I sit there thinking, what reader can ever fall in love with that story, and that's good because if I don't have confidence in the story, why would I expect anyone out there to have confidence in it, a piece of advice, perhaps, that I got from a book about how to write, because that's not the kind of stuff I would think about, given that even if I may not be satisfied by my own short story, I may still send it somewhere, still trust that the story has given birth to itself, that all I have done is help it be delivered. This concept I am developing for a writer's workshop which I am entitling "Meeting Your Story Half Way"...

This is the energy I get out of the poetry readings....