The Balancing Act

What I have loved about this residency is the fact that it’s allowed me to be who I am. Very often people ask me to be a novelist, or a children’s writer, or a performance poet, or an editor or a page poet or a dramatist – rarely just Nii Ayikwei Parkes, who can answer to all those labels even though he may not agree with the specifics of them.

Here, I’ve been able to talk about my journey as a writer, my work for children, my process, fatherhood, my choice of pen name, a fellowship, my performances and readings, my workshops… It’s a long list. I realise that I haven’t spoken much about my work as an editor, but I think that’s because it’s such a midnight job for me that I don’t even think of it as a job. It fits in a little crevice between all the things I do to earn money (being a family man and all) – and I do it for some reason that can only be called madness or love. Last night, for instance, I was overseeing the layout of Adrienne J. Odasso’s début, Lost Books, while trying to put my daughter to bed. I will never get paid in currency for the editorial work I’ve done on the book, but – as with all the poets and writers I’ve edited – I hope that it will be the start of a remarkable career. That is the reward for me; I can’t express how fulfilled I feel when I hear the names of Niall O’Sullivan, Niki Aguirre, Roger Robinson, Charlotte Ansell, Jacob Sam-La Rose, Agnes Meadows, Inua Ellams and Malika Booker whispered in admiring tones. I feel like I’ve had some part to play in the public recognition of their talents. Nevertheless, it is a balancing act – a constant shifting of sleep patterns, deadlines, budgets, overdraft limits and leisure allowances – to make possible the production of great art. Still, this very balancing mirrors who I am – a scientist turned writer, a Ghanaian born in Lincolnshire, an editor who never studied Literature, a writer at the beginning of his career who teaches writing… Life has no flavour without these twists.

As I approach the end of my residency, I do feel that I have to thank a few people without whom I wouldn’t have been able to make the time to fulfil the tasks that Booktrust set me – my lovely missus, who kept me away from the baby; the two fantastic poetry editors at flipped eye publishing, Niall O’Sullivan and Jacob Sam-La Rose, who have reduced my workload considerably; and the mysterious Mr. Smith and Nikesh Shukla at Booktrust who reminded me to blog when I got carried away doing other things. I will thank many more people, in my next blog – my last of this residency – in which I will also tell you about the brilliant writer who will be replacing me as Booktrust’s online writer in residence.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go and juggle. 

I leave you with a poem I have been playing with on and off for the last year and a bit, which I hope I’ve finally nailed; something that speaks of perseverance and high aspirations, both needed for those that dream of writing. It’s called ‘Constellation’ and I hope its small voice remains with you after the fire of my blogging has long burned out. Peace, love and mangoes from Accra.