I should have posted this nearly a week ago, but here we are.
I was recently commissioned to do a poem for an NGO known as CARE International. The organization posted the video on YouTube and Instagram for International Women’s Day 2021, and I thought I’d document that here, for those who are interested. 🙂
Here is the YouTube link.
And here is the IGTV link.
-Akotz
Hello there! Yesterday was Green Green Grasses‘ debut day! New episodes will be out every Wednesday evening until all eight episodes are done. This post is more for the benefit of people who follow my WordPress and not my social media. So here you go:
Episode 1: Why The Spider Uses Its Web to Catch Food
Enjoy! Oh, and follow MoonSpider on SoundCloud! Oh, and stay tuned every Wednesday for a new episode! Thanks, love you!
-Akotowaa
I should have written this blog post long ago. Instead, here I am, announcing a project on the day it launches. Because, you know, life. Anyway.
Do you remember Kuukua Annan from the OTC short story series? Because I remember being asked why Kuukua’s cousin, Ntiwaa, always had to be in every story somehow. Well, for all you curious minds, here’s your answer: Green Green Grasses.
As soon as I finished writing Kuukua and the Magical Markers, I knew this podcast had to fokn camon. Approximately 1 year and 4 months since the conception of the idea, it’s about to go live!
Green Green Grasses is a scripted podcast, which means it’s entirely audio, but like, dramatic in a similar way as a play on a theater stage is dramatic. It’s 8 stories of Anansesem (you probably figured that out from the name if you grew up where I grew up), coming out every Wednesday (the Sacred Day of the Ananse, which you’ll know if you’ve read Kuukua’s stories) until the episodes finish. Each episode is loosely based on a Kuukua story in consecutive order. Real ones can probably figure out which folklore characters correspond with OTC characters.
Honestly, I think my only relevant roles in the GGG project were conception and scripting. Everyone else did all the important stuff. All my friends and their friends/relatives who agreed to voice act for this thing that they didn’t even fully understand yet, but somehow still killed their respective roles! My best friend, Tronomie, who, despite demonic afflictions, spent ages compiling, putting thought into audio effects, and mixing until he was probably sick of hearing everyone’s voices! I mean, I’d have gone mad if I’d had to play every line fifteen times just to get one thing right. Speaking of collaboration, GGG is being released under MoonSpider Productions, which is made up of literally two people: myself and Tronomie. OTC is an Akotowaa project, but GGG is a MoonSpider project. Does that make sense? It’s fine if it doesn’t, LOL.
Anyway, I’ve typed a lot. Watch the videos in my social media announcements, LOL. 🙂
Episode 1, Why the Spider Uses Its Web to Catch Food, comes out TODAY at 5.30pm GMT. [Update: Since I know many of you probably think it’s too much work to go and find our SoundCloud via another post, here’s the link. Yes, it’s out.]
So like, stay tuned and dat, and follow MoonSpider on SoundCloud. 🙂 Oh, also on Twitter and Instagram, if you want to.
-Akotowaa
My name seems to have appeared in quite a few places over the past few months, so I thought it would be convenient to give my blog readers an update on all of them at once. I’m not usually this involved in things, so I don’t expect blog posts like this to be frequent. But, for now, here we go:
A few weeks ago, I found out I was longlisted for the 2018 Writivism Short Story Prize. The shortlist was released yesterday and I did not make it that far, but making it onto the longlist means that my short story, as well as all the other longlisted writers’ short stories, are going to be published in an anthology by Black Letter Media later. So, that’s fantastic.
More on the Writivism initiative/competition here. You can follow them on Twitter as well, here.
Poetra Asantewa launched a new art magazine in July, and for its first issue, she got a few people to contribute. My contribution was a very dissatisfying story that we can pretend is sci-fi flash fiction for classification purposes, highly augmented by some lit photography by Josephine Kuuire. The magazine is really refreshing in terms of layout, vibrancy, minimalism, collaboration and the general nature of its content. I highly recommend you take a read – it’s very short – and digital versions are available on the Tampered Press website.
Paapa hMensa, a musical and lyrical legend whom I’ve met once (he probably doesn’t remember it, though, because I was entirely irrelevant then, and it was during his concert, so he was meeting a ton of people at once anyway), released the second installment to his Technical Difficulties EP series, and the title track features me! It’s a beautiful song, going perfectly excellently as it plays, and then I barge in and start talking plenty in the name of spoken word poetry, SMH. I also briefly introduced each song, so my voice is on literally every track.
The EP is amazing, it’s been on heavy rotation in my music library since it dropped, and it’s musically even better than its prequel. (Is the word prequel applicable to musical projects? I don’t know.) Paapa is a magician, because I don’t even understand how he managed to achieve that. No Heart Left, ft. M.anifest, is a favorite. You can find his EP on pretty much every major music distribution site. 🙂
The DJ duo, #IFKR, which is composed of Eff the DJ and DJ K3V, released a new EP yesterday, exclusively on the Ghanaian musical platform, Aftown. I introduced that EP as well, with a lot of talking in the beginning that feels very weird to hear because I wrote it years ago and hadn’t heard it for a while. The entire EP has been years in the making, and I can personally vouch for the true banger-ness of particularly Lie B3n which features Ayat, and, of course, the pre-released single Omi Gbono, which features Odunsi. You can find the link to the EP here.
I know a previous blog post has mentioned this already, but I compiled Kuukua Annan’s OTC stories into a single PDF and created a new site for the OTC project so ayyy check it out and tell a friend!
Okay. Dazzit. Spider Kid out!
-Akotowaa
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