Helloooo Again!🙋🏾‍♀️

I come bearing good news 😅😅

You might be wondering…is this a ghost? Does she remember she has a Substack account? Is she dying and wants to tell us her deepest darkest secret? 😱😲

Well…unfortunately no, I’m still very much alive on this round (or flat?) planet and collecting the oxygen required to survive.

I do apologise deeply for not updating for what feels like decades! You’d think as a marketer in real life I’d know how to engage and take care of my readers yet 😣!

In this post I’ll give:

⁃ a rundown of what I’ve been up to

⁃ Good stuff that has happened from that 😁

⁃ And announcements!

Poetry!

Work’s been chaotic, being an immigrant is more chaotic and thinking of climbing corporate ladder? Hella messy and very tiring. So at the beginning of this year I decided to expand the footprints of my writing. I know I had been sharing my works here and gradually building a reasonable subscriber base that actively read my work but at some point it felt like I wasn’t challenging myself enough, and I wanted validation from other platforms (I’m vain and human sue me). I wanted my bio to read shit like ‘featured here and there’. So I focused more on writing poems (because for some reason everything that has come out of me this year writing wise has come in the form of a poem!) and sending them out to magazines, and applying for loads of opportunities! Most of them came back with a resounding ‘fuck no’ some were more gentle with it and a few said ‘yessssss’!

I am currently published on: Conscio, Wsa-N, Discretionary love, Brittle paper, Featured on Kirk’s art trail (physical stuff), I also got commissioned to perform at BlackFest 🥳, And I’m getting published!

Pole dancing!

I also decided to take up pole dancing again. A fucking expensive hobby but it’s so fulfilling despite the terrible body aches and tangled limbs I seem to fall into. I’m not going to lie, I get discouraged quite easily and with PCOS fatigue hitting day in day out I’m almost on the verge of giving up! But my studio also offers burlesque classes so I’ve met myself in the middle- when my week’s packed I take a burlesque class (not like that’s much easier but it’s less intimidating a more fun than having the fear of falling like a pancake when I’m slippery)

Anyway, I signed up to perform at the winter showcase at my studio, now I have no where to run and have to commit. I am scared and excited at the same time!

AfroQueer Lit:

Some of you might have seen us on Substack AfroQueer and wondered where tf did they go? What do they do? And what not. I’ll give you the tea.

When I first started Afroqueer lit, I wanted it to be an online journal that featured black and brown queer writers works and offered writers workshops on the side, workshops that incorporated various cultural nuances and fostered conversations that were accessible and very useful and helpful to participants. I realised the journal but didn’t really get me as excited as I wanted, I was more eager to host the workshops and teach and engage with writings in physical spaces.

So far, I’ve held four workshop in Manchester and Leeds, for local writers and gotten good feedback.

I plan on doing a lot more though but I’ve got to pace myself before I get there. We’re on Instagram if you’d like to support @afroqueer_lit

Black Fest!

BlackFest is a creative festival that spotlights black creatives in northern England. They’ve been running for about five years now and have supported a variety of artists and talents! And I have been commissioned to perform at their spoken word segment!!!

I’m so freaking excited.

It’s been a lot of work. I’m currently writing this on the morning of the launch ceremony cause I’m too excited and nervous to sleep.

I’ve been really stretched, learning to perform my poems off script, learning to set the stage for my performance and stuff about theatre, intonations and vocal exercises. It’s been a lot but I know it’ll be so worth it. I can feel it in my bones!

update: we’ve had the launch ceremony now and it was amazing! I can finally do some poetry without the script! fuck yeah!

I’m Getting Published!!

This doesn’t feel like the ideal way to announce this but there’s been so much going on and I’m finger-crossing that you can understand when I say I am overwhelmed with joy!

Inkspired; an indie press and an organisation that supports grassroots Nigerian poets have decided to publish my debut poetry collection the mess that is my mind and it’ll be out on September 13th! Check out the pretty cover!

I have in fact written this announcement again and again and it never felt right just announcing this without painting the full picture on all that has been happening…it didn’t feel fair.

Anyway, I will be doing a book reading with my writing club and will share the link here as soon as that’s sorted to get us all into the mood.

This collection has taken me about five years to compile as a gift and a documentation of my first five years as an adult. In this collection I have poured everything I could share from my ugly tears moments to my mildly annoyed and heavily loved lorn times. I genuinely hope you enjoy the pieces in the pages and they resonate with you.

I’m not sure how often I will continue posting here, I don’t want to abandon this page as blogging here has given me the motivation to do much more, so I can only ask for your patience as I find the balance that’ll sustain my devotion.

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P.S :

If anyone would like to collaborate; have a book chat on a podcast or just chat in general please DM!

Song Of The Week:

Song of the week: I’ve been listening to Rich by Teddy because bruh, I want more money while I sleep 😫!