Thursday, December 20, 2007

MOVING PLANS

The more they called me a writer, the less I wrote. Well, lets put it all in perspective: there is writing and then there is writing. I feel like I write a lot these days. Not the most I have written in my most prolific times, previously, but a lot still. In fits, I write; in hits and misses, just like before. The only difference now is that most of what I write cannot and will never add to my dream of a Kenyan Canon.

One of my handlers said to me the other day, “Potash, what is this thing about not blogging? ...You are nothing without that blog!” Indeed. For all its bawdy leanings, an ovum thin veneer of pseudo-intellectualism and pedestrian approach to the craft of writing, this blog remains my only claim to literary cred.

It has found its spaces; thrust me into new places. Six excerpts from it made it into the latest edition of the journal Kwani? Charles A. Matathia has done an impressive rendition of Voluntary Drinking Overseas for the latest edition of the Nigerian Literary magazine Farafina- Farafina 11: Journeys. Keguro Macharia taught excerpts from it out there in the American Midwest. Then there was the BBC interview, being plagiarised by fringe newsletters and being turned into spam. Hey, some nice Italian journal even translated me into Italian.

All said... I need to return to this space. I need it. And I am working on that return. It might not be as dramatic as I had envisioned it... but I am working on things... working with others, to find this blog a new home.

All this hopefully in the new year. Meantime watch this space.