 Welcome, thank you so much for joining us. We are now halfway through our two-day in-person programming at the British Library, which concludes this evening at 5 p.m. with Egyptian-American author and activist Mona El-Tahawi. Please do scan the QR codes dotted around the building to familiarise yourselves with the programme, to send us your feedback, and to also pre-order this incredible anthology of wild imperfections. Nikki, do you want to wave your hands? She will be giving you a bit more information about the pre-orders after this discussion. We do also have Senegalese food being served outside, so please do grab some food if you haven't already after this discussion. We hope you enjoy this session, Wild Imperfections, a discussion with contributors of the anthology, Annie Domingo and Khadija Sesse, with a video introduction from the editor Natalia Mollebatsi with readings from Olamide Popola and Kachonwa Demwa. This discussion will be chaired by poets and playwright Tolu Agbelusi, and you can also get a copy of her book, Locating Strong Woman, after this conversation, as well as Annie Domingo's book outside after this conversation. So before I hand over to Tolu, I'm sorry, just one last thing that I need to say. A couple more housekeeping points from me. For our live audience, please do turn off your mobile phones, or at least have them on silent, and we aren't expecting any fire alarms this afternoon, so if you do hear one, please do follow the emergency exit signs. Okay, I think I've spoken enough now. Thanks Tolu, I'll leave it to you now. Thanks Marcel. And good afternoon, welcome everybody, especially to those of you who made it in person, and also those of you who are following us online. My name is Tolu Agbelusi, I will be your moderator today, and I am joined by Annie Domingo, who has an impressive bio, so I'm going to run through it. Annie is a writer, director, lecturer, and actress in radio, TV, films, and theatre. Her short stories and poems are in various anthologies, including in Wild Imperfections. Her plays have been produced in the UK, and her first screenplay, Blessed Assurance, has just been filmed. An extract from her debut novel, Breaking the Maffer Chain, features in The New Dottas of Africa, which was published in 2019, and the book has now been published by Jacaranda in September 2021. Please put your hands together for Annie Domingo. And to my right is Khadija Sase, Khadija is a literary activist. She is the former publisher of Sable Lipmag, and is the Publications Manager for Inscribe at Peepo Tree Press. Her poetry collection is Urqui, she is the co-founder of Umboka Festival in Zagambia, the founder of Afri Poetry, and PhD scholarship student research in Black British Publishers and Pan-Africanism. This event is presented in partnership with Cassava Republic Press, who is publishing the anthology, Wild Imperfections. And of course, Africa Rights is brought to you by Royal African Society, a Pan-African membership charity, and you can find out more about them and joining them and supporting their work by visiting royalafricansociety.org. The festival relies very much on public funding, so if you would like to donate, you can do this by visiting their website, and for those of you who are online, by clicking the link which has been provided to you in the comments. You could also consider becoming an arts and culture member, so you can get 50% of Africa Rights and film Africa Festival. There will be time for questions after the conversation, for those of you in the room. There will be microphones roving, which will be sanitized after each question, but if you're still not comfortable using the microphones, you can ask the volunteers to type the questions into a pad for you, and those will be sent up. Those of you online, please put your questions in the box below the video. And yeah, I think I've said enough now on the housekeeping, so without further ado, we will watch the introductory video from Natalia Mulebatsi. Hello, my name is Natalia Mulebatsi. I'm the editor of Wild Imperfections, an anthology of womanist poems. It is a great honor and a privilege to curate this gathering of womanist poets from all across Africa and her diaspora. We are here to reach one another, to read one another. This book is about movement building. It is about work that will outlive us. It is a book that is truly womanist, pan-African, and intergenerational. It is our hope also that you can join the gathering and be familiar with the work of the many poets who are gathered here, from Niki Giovanni to Diana Ferris, to Montadomiri to Warsan, Shireh to Laddan Osman, to Malaika Boka, and so many more. We invite you to take this work with you so that you can interpret it in your own way and so that the ideas in the book can flourish. Welcome to the land of Wild Imperfections. We have two wonderful contributors. So the first thing we will do is hear them read one of their pieces each, which are in the anthology. Khadija, would you like to go first? I don't mind, since you've nominated me. OK, the first one I will read is actually I've got four poems in the anthology. And I love being in anthologies. I think anthologies are very important. So the first one I'm going to read is actually the last one in here. It's called The Moon Under Water. And it was dedicated to my sister, Safi. And it's after the house was quiet and the world was calm by Wallace Stevens. Wallace Stevens is an American poet, and I just love the style that he had, the structure of a poem of the house was quiet and the house was quiet and the world was calm. The moon underwater curves like my sister's smile. As my sister swims underwater, her form is like a smiling moon. She curves, she smiles, she beams. She kisses the moon underwater. Her essence reflects silver, like the moon. I read her wedding and I couldn't even finish it, I just cried. That was practice, for now. Beautiful, thank you, Annie. Hi. My poem, the first one I'm going to read, is called The Cutting. I did a play two years ago. Time is sort of constant, I don't know, two or three years ago at the Park Theatre and it was about FGM, which was written by Gloria Williams. And something about it sort of caught my attention. I was playing one of the, there were only three parts, I was playing one of the parts there. And I started thinking about it and I started writing this poem. It's called The Cutting. She always knew that her day would come. Girls are born for this. There's no option, no choice, no right to complain. No one wants to hear that this act is wrong. Her mother and grandmother survived it, she would too. It is tradition, so they say. The women will cut her, snip at the bud, shave, carve, level it out, infibrillate the devil's tongue between her legs to give her a stainless, sinless body. She must carry this burden of femininity. It's her duty, her destiny of pain, so they say. Cold breeze blows and sends warning signs. They talk in low voices ready for the task. Stripped naked, stretched apart, each limb, legs and arms firmly held by them, the holders of torso, obedient and silent. Her screams must be stitched in, so they say. Pain eats into her flesh. It comes in waves, each worse than the one before, an ocean of awareness lost in a world of agony. Too late to scream stop, to cry have mercy. Lips sewn up, leaving only a small opening to answer the call of nature, so they say. Her pey sooth where virginal lips had been, tied with ropes from thighs to toes, no moving, no writhing, she waits to heal. Seal up that place, learn to sit, to stand, do not bend or push those legs apart. Practice the mermaid walk, so they say. Thank you. Thank you. And as you've heard just from the two poems on the table, the themes in this book are broad. And if there was a way to capture all of the poems that come together here, I would say remembrance. The first poem in the book is a poem by Dan Ferris called I've Come to Take You Home, which speaks back in time to Sarah Bartman and says basically to her, you know, we remember you. And apparently the notoriety that that poem gained was responsible for shaming the French authorities into finally returning her remains to South Africa in 2002. Then you have poems in here from Niki Giovanni, which speaks about Rosa Parks. So that whole thing about honoring, remembering those who have gone before, but not just that. We're also honoring those who have gone too soon, the Sandra Blands, the others who we know amongst us. And then there's also a call to remembrance of those who are living, us, that we should remember ourselves, that we should see ourselves and remember who we are. So an anthology like this in saying see, see the breath of who we are as women, as black women, also calls us to discovery. And in that spirit of discovery, my first question to both of you actually is who are the women poets, the feminist poets who have shaped your literary journey and why were they important to you? Perture for me is something that comes from within. I don't know when I sit down to write, whether I'm going to write a short story or a novel or a poem. The subject sort of speaks to me and tells me where I'm going to go. And so one of the main people, main feminist poets for me, is the one and only Maya Angelou. I find that what she writes about is so, although it's set in the black world, it speaks universally. It speaks to all people. And the subject that she chooses are ones that, I see them as sort of standing up and saying, I dare you to tell me otherwise. So one of my favorite poems of hers is, And Still I Rise. And that spoke to me in so many ways that I then translated it into my native language, which is Creole from Sierra Leone. Because I think that sometimes we need to make it even more of our own. The other poet that I love, and I've read a lot of her poems is Niki Giovanni, which I find is absolutely amazing that I'm in the same anthology as somebody like her. And also Norbisi Phillips. And she's also in the book. Because they both, it's the subjects that they take, the subjects that they deal with, and the style that they deal with it. Niki Giovanni, for example, uses a lot of, besides metaphors and similes, she does a lot of repetition to emphasize what the subject is about. And for me, that's a style that I've developed where I do a lot of repetition of phrases or words. And Norbisi deals with some big subjects, well, Meyer and Niki deal with big subjects of racial tensions, prejudice, violence. But Niki, Norbisi's poem, The Song, has held me and I go back to it, which is a whole full book of poems, just dealing with the Song trial, which was a time when 130 slaves were thrown off this ship because they wanted to claim insurance because they were running out of water and all sorts of things. But the whole poem is written looking at the transcript of the trial. And she writes in a way that brings you into the subject. But it's also the way she puts it on the page. It forces you to break up and to think, gives you moments to think and then to carry your head. So I'll stop there, at least three, I could name a few more, but for different reasons that excite me and make me want to write poetry, but also to read it. I think when you feel that they're speaking to you personally and that it's almost conversational and they're bringing you into their thoughts, that's what fires me up and makes me want to write. Thank you. Well, it's interesting, because I really like Maya and Shluse too, but I never kind of put it into my head that she was one of my poetry mentors in a way. But when I think about it, I've only read her poetry. I've never read her other work, only her poetry, because that, again, is what spoke to me. And so I'll just throw it out there and still I rise in Creole by Annie Domingo is online. Okay, it's fantastic, so please go and check it out. But the main person for me, I have to say is Sonia Sanchez. Oh my gosh, Sonia Sanchez and I, sister Sonia, she's wonderful. I love Haiku. I write very short poems and I like to try and pack a lot of layers of meaning into very short lines. And Sonia Sanchez does both very well. She is a master of Haiku. You know, when you're a poet and they say, well, learn the rules first, then you know how to break them. That's what she's done. So she writes Haiku. She writes tankers, but she's developed her own Sonku's since she's Sonia. And they're fantastic. I love it. And she has a bluesy Haiku too, you know, everything is there. Another two poets I like, I'll just mention really quickly. And, you know, there haven't been a lot of African women poets around that much published. It's been really difficult, but with recent movements that, that's kind of changed. So there's a lot of poets I admire now like Wosa and Shirei, for example. But another one I really like is Rita Dove. Because I really like structure and style and she is great. And there's a fantastic article that the Washington posted of hers. It's called something like in her, something to do in her dreaming. It's about 20 years ago. And I saw that article and that is what inspired me to start Sable Lit Mag. Because she broke down the poem. It's a very short poem. And she talks about, and this is also the essence of good journalism because it was a really, really good article. And she writes in colored file, in colored folders. That's how she writes. And it was a really short poem, but she broke everything down line by line. And when she wrote the line and when she changed it, a fantastic piece of work. And I'd use it for teaching. I'd use it for teaching as well. Did you keep that practice? Yes. Okay. Yeah. And just the last one I just mentioned, Lucille Clifton is also totally, totally amazing. Just very deep and sometimes almost very, some of her is very eerie sometimes her work. But again, I really like structure and style and they're all really... I mean, I think that's what moves us along, but it's the different styles that make it exciting. And opens up possibilities. For me, it means that I can go at it at whichever way I want to because I have the freedom of those that have gone before me to show me different styles. I don't have to do it in one way. And we mentioned earlier, there are 39 poets in Wild Imperfections from all across the diaspora. Chihuahua Dema is one of those poets and we're gonna watch a video from her. But before we do, I'm gonna say a little bit about Chihuahua. She, her first collection, if you don't have it, help yourself, get it. It's called The Careless Simstress. It won the Cilliman first book prize for African poetry. She has been very instrumental or she was very instrumental in setting up the poetry scene in Botswana. Every time I hear her, I am moved by her. So it's no surprise that I find her words in this collection. We will hear the poem and then we'll talk a little bit more. Chihuahua Dema. As we celebrate this birth of our Wild Imperfections, which has, of course, been compiled and edited by the lovely and talented Natalia Molivaiti. There's not much to say about the anthology that hasn't already been beautifully put by Brandy Everisto in her example looking forward to this anthology and do make sure to read that as well when you grab your copy of the book. So before I read my one poem, which is one of three that I contributed to the anthology, I will say only this congratulations to my fellow poets and to Natalia. I couldn't be in finer company. My name is Chihuahua Dema and this is lost as ampersand. And in this house, death havers like time is time. We learn to count the ways it comes for you. Crossing a road, mother-in-law with bitter leaves for a tongue, the wrong word leaving your own mouth, a husband with a temper, and always, always to be a girl with new blood between the thighs. I say to Grace, little sister, your living will kill me and keep me all at once. And so you must go. I turn to make language of her memories, a path cold, split pea soup in Tupperware that will surely be missed. Wrap buns baked in a cast-iron pot in old, clean cloth. I take the beads off my own waist, roll the speckled gray between my palms and set it in hers. She's crying now, but must leave. And I must remember to say the beads broke and fell off. I make her repeat the words that I have had her rehearse quietly all year long, where to go, the way to go, how to stay silent while saying everything, who not to be when she gets there. All year I skimped on groceries, hid the small change. I open an old packet of sanitary towels, pulled out from what passes for storage, unfurl the currency. My eyes meet her gasp. I meet you tuck all I'm worth into her small bra. Go, I say, this is not the end. Remember me, so you may never return to a time such as this. Little sister, if you are reading this prayer, then you are alive, which means somewhere away from here. So am I. Yeah, every time I hear TJ's work, I moved. And the lines that stick out for me on that one is how to say everything. Well, yes, how to stay silent while saying everything. And then remember me, so you may never return to a place such as this. I mean, they're small words, but power. Same so much. And when I think about that poem, we're talking about the things that we passed down. Khadija talked about reading Rita Dove, and then that being the impetus for Sable Lipmag. That's a big deal because Sable Lipmag, and you talk about that in a little bit, your work with collecting our stories in a bit, but the influences that we have on each other without ever really knowing it. So here in this Britain, for example, we can't talk about black women anthologies, for example, without talking about Dottas of Africa and new Dottas of Africa. I mean, I remember being 14, 15 and stumbling on this huge white book in Haringey Library. And I don't know why I took it home, but I did. And I renewed it several times because I had never seen something like that before with so many black women. And I saw myself for the first time, and I don't know that I realized that I was looking for myself before then. And that is the power of these kinds of anthologies. And even I heard Natalia speaking a couple of weeks ago, and she was also talking about the fact that Margaret Busby and new Dottas of Africa and Dottas of Africa also influenced her own journey in terms of how you put work together and make sure that you collect our stories. And the genesis, maybe I should say, of this is that there was an anthology called We Are, which Natalia had done some years back. And for the 10th anniversary of that, she was going to do a new edition with newer poets. And then she started to speak to Bibi Bakare Yusuf of Cassava Republic Press. And Bibi said, well, why don't you open it up to other women, black women around the diaspora? So you make it a real Pan-African project. And so this was born. And even with that, we're still talking about influence, people who don't just plant ideas, but who also say, well, I'll publish it too. I'm fine to do that. I'll put my money where my mouth is, you know? And so this is very much about discovery because in as much as I can read this and there are lots of people I know, there are also people I know absolutely nothing about. So we're going to stay in the spirit of discovery and archiving and why it is important. And I'm going to go to Khadija on this. You have edited quite a number of anthologies. Sable Lipma has stopped running. It's suspended, should we say? It's suspended. I can't say, I've given it up, it's suspended. Okay, Sable Lipma is suspended. We're hoping it comes back. And now you're doing something called Afri poetry? Yes. So I want you to talk a little bit about that because from where I'm sitting, all of that also sounds like what this is doing in a way in terms of collecting our work. So why is that important to you? It's important to me because Afri poetry is for techy people, it's an SIV, I've been told. Selective Interactive Video. So it's just like a video-based app, right? It really, it's really video that drives it. So when I was publishing my first collection, which was in 2013, and I wanted to think about how to promote it and because I'm also into publishing, I thought, okay, you know, old-style publishing, an old-time print, I had to do it like this and I took around a mini exhibition to libraries and then I thought, okay, take it to the other end. In the future, how would I do it? And it's gonna be digital. So I had a little app of about 20 poets because it's more fun promoting other poets with yourself. So even on that, it was like an anthology, it was like 20 poets. And because I'm really, I'm a Pan-Africanist and I've been asked to write a poem about, to commemorate, it was like the 1945 Manchester Conference, Pan-African Conference. So I thought, oh yeah, so I wanted to put them together, the Pan-Africanism in the poetry. So I had an app called The Modern Pan-Africanist Journey with 20 poets on it. So that was kind of like at the beginning of my PhD. By the time I finished my PhD, which I was like, oh gosh, I've just got to get back to some real life now. And I thought to myself, let me develop this app. And the people who'd done it for me, who'd done it for me said, this is really fantastic. Why did you just leave it? That's because somebody, you know, is doing other things. So then we came up with this another project that was more poets and more Pan-Africanism and just merging them, kind of bringing them together. So now I'm building and developing this platform so that you can read, you can see, you can hear poets across the continent of African descent on this one platform. And alongside it, you'll have, and I've called it Ancestor Poets. So there's about a page of poets who've passed all Pan-Africanists and most Pan-African leaders wrote at least one poem. There were either poets, published poets anyway. And then I started looking, thinking, they all seem to have written poetry. So that is on there and just different poetry resources from everywhere and different magazines. So there's stuff for emerging poets and there's stuff for more established poets. So all the poets on there gave me tips for emerging poets. And I said, well, what book would you read if you had to travel on a journey? And of course, most of them wanted to have more than one. Restricting them to one was difficult, you know, and favorite poetry. So just things like that. So every time I thought I'd finished collecting some material, I decided to put more on there. But, you know, it just, it started off as fun and it's ended up as this platform project. But it is about archiving. It is very much about archiving. But there is actually a bigger archive by what Kwame Dawes is doing in the States, the African Poetry Book Fund. And they have got a big project of archiving African poetry that they're working on now. I thought I should mention that because that's pretty important. The chat book collection or something else? No, it's a digital, I'm not sure what it's called, but if you go online, African Poetry Book Fund. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you'll all see there's some details about this archive that they're putting together of African poetry from the year dot. Ooh. Yeah. Yeah, they got some funding to do that. So yeah, so that's one of my archiving. Cool. And I mean, in this book, Jumaqe'a Very Simo, who is a Nigerian poet, has a poem called Lockdown Journal in. And one of the lines in that poem says something along the lines of, we have found a way to be seen by stealing our lives from their mouths. Which I was like, again, short lines, but power. When we're talking about collecting our stories, making sure that we tell our own stories for ourselves, that is what that is going back to. And Annie, I'm going to come back to you to read in just a little while, and I'm prepping you. Okay. You were in New Dottas of Africa. Yes. You're in this. Yes. Why is it important to you to appear in these kinds of collections? I remember the first time I saw, I read one of these anthologies. And what was exciting for me was to see the different people that were in it and the different styles. And sort of just getting me interested in, I've never heard of this person. I must go and find out some more. And with the New Dottas of Africa, I'd heard about the Dottas of Africa, but I'd never actually been able to get hold of it because online it's like super expensive and I haven't been to a library. But I'd read some of it snippets. So I was very interested. And when I heard they were doing the New Dottas, I did not see myself as somebody who would be in that kind of anthology. However, they were doing a competition for a voice that hadn't been published. And I reluctantly sort of entered. And to my surprise, I won. So then here was I in this anthology with people that I've admired for years. And it gave me some kind of a confidence that we all have our own voices. And even if you've not been published, you have something to say. So when this, and I've been in other anthologies with poetry and I find that really interesting to see the ideas of people and what they're writing about and being in this, again, with some of the people I've admired and been reading the things, I've been reading Kadija's poems. As I said, Nicky Giovanni, Jackie Kay, all of these people whose work I've admired and to see my own work there. Boy, it's good. It feels absolutely wonderful. But it also gives me the feeling, I'm also a teacher, a lecturer, for me to say to my students, anything is possible. Just keep on reading and find out that you will find your own style and it will fit in somewhere. And it's easier to fit into an anthology even if you haven't got a whole body of work for your own publication. That can come. But it's being amongst such class that I enjoy and the fact that when somebody opens a book like Wild Imperfections, they don't know what they're going to find and what they're going to discover, the people, the stories, the ideas. Thank you. You mentioned that you have quite short poems. So I'm gonna ask you to read two poems, but there's one of your poems that I particularly want you to read and if you read that as the second one of whatever you read. And that is the most beautiful sound in the world. So you can read whatever you're gonna read and then read that one. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to read tattoo. My body marked from the age of 15 as a pending expectant. Stretch marks, small other marks, ready for a baby to suck. That closed like an enemy prematurely. Distended belly that never flattened. Since then, my mother has never looked at me naked. And the second poem, that's even shorter. The title is called the most beautiful sound in the world. Water in the dry season. Running from a communal tap. Thank you. Three lines short, but... I read it, I came across that poem when I was going through the book this weekend in preparation and I thought, just look at that. The community jumps out. First of all, the title, the most beautiful sound in the world and then this people, it's dry season, water's good. But then it's not just that you're getting water in dry season, it's that you're doing it with people. That we're doing these things together, that we're in this room together. I'll tell you what took me longest on that poem. The question mark at the end of the title. I thought, should it be a question or should it be a statement? And that's the thing with poetry, right? You can spend days agonizing over a punctuation. Yes. The beauty of editing. Sometimes it's beauty, sometimes it's pain, but the poems come out great by the time they reach you. Thinking about community. I mean, it's in some press thing that I read so I'm sure you don't mind me saying that you're around the 10th anniversary of your seven-year birthday. No, you go right ahead and say, I am, I am jolly proud of the fact that I'm almost 72. And I have, and I have just published my debut novel this week. Yes, that is where I'm going. So at a stage where most people are wrapping up careers, you have several and you're starting a new one because your debut collection, Breaking the Mafia Chain is coming out now. And one, I want to know what that experience has been like, but I also want to know in this spirit of community that Cadetius Palm just talked about how has community, but particularly the Fellowship of Black Women supported you in that journey of entering this new phase. I think that community, I've always written, but I never thought that I could publish because it was more like a hobby. I'm interested in words, but I went into theater and acting and directing, but all the time I dabbled in writing. And it's amazing when you just get a little bit of encouragement and you start thinking, ooh, maybe I can do that. And so it's been the friends and people who have stood for encouragement when I've said, no, no, I'm not good enough. They're going, no, that's really good. One of them is sitting over there, Cadetius, who has been one of my mentors. You've been part of it. We've worked together. And I must say that somebody like Bernadine Everisto, she has been absolutely amazing with all writers, but especially black writers. And Bernadine, of course, wrote the flow. And I can remember where the journey of my novel started when I wrote as a short sort of piece when I was doing my masters in creative writing. And then I put it by. And then somebody, my tutor said, this is really, really good. You should carry on. And I put it by. And then I found out about the Lucy Cavendish competition at Cambridge. I live near Cambridge. And two other friends, one of them black, one of them white, who had seen it. I said, I've only got sort of like four chapters. And they said, no, you've got to send it in. And then it was shortlisted. And I got an agent from it. And I thought, now I've got to finish the damn book. And then life took over. And I was doing all lots of things. And I would get into it. But New Daughters of Africa forced me to finish it. And from that, willing that and going into that, pushed me into finding a publisher and going on that journey. It's been sort of like being pushed by people supporting me, by people like Margaret Busby saying, this is good. When they choose it to win out of thousands of other entries, it gives you such confidence. And age is but a number. I do 10 million different things. It's really after it's been published that people keep talking about in your 70s. I go, so what? I intend to be here in my hundreds. I've told my children, if I die, don't cremate me, bury me. Because when they find out what's wrong, they can put me together again, and I can finish the things I have to do. So, but it's been with encouragement. It's been with people who have sort of said, yes, this is good enough to make you go on. And with that, I've now got an agent, I've got a publisher, and I'm writing the sequel to that novel. So in about two years' time, I'll be back. And in between, I write the poems and whatever that comes to mind. Very briefly, tell us what it's about. I'm from Sierra Leone, and for years, when your child, you hear these stories and you don't pay any attention to it. But it was a story about this girl who used to be a slave and then was adopted or brought to England as a gift for Queen Victoria. And they changed her name to Sarah Forbes Bonetta. And I knew some of her descendants. I did not know much about her. And in fact, it was because of my masters that I started looking for a story that pertained to me that told my story about being from Africa and some of the things that happened. I did not want to write about the slave trade, but it has, it is part of our history. So this story is about Sarah Forbes Bonetta, but it starts when imaginary, because I wasn't there. What her life was like before she was captured. And then she was brought to England at the age of about seven or eight, having been from her village to being a slave in King Gezo's Dahomey to coming and being treated as the black princess and being fated all over the place and written about. And I just put myself, what was that eight-year-old girl feeling and thinking as she had all these new experiences? So it's about Sarah Forbes Bonetta. And they sent her back after one year back to Africa. And I thought, what was her, well, what did she feel like being on that ship going back to where she had come from and what were her wants? So that's what this book is about. And this sequel comes when she comes back because she does come back to England. Tolia, I just wanted to add something to the community. The last time that Annie and I were both on this stage, we were on the stage together, and we were in this corner and there was an anthology, again an anthology. And this was a cross-continence because it was produced in the state. So I'm Gwendolyn Brooks. And again, talking about different stuff. Yes, Golden Shovel. I was in La Rune. You were in La Rune, Golden Shovel. And I'm also from Sierra Leone, but I'm not a native Creole speaker. And my Creole speaking is terrible. And I wanted people to understand what it was like. So I invited and asked Annie, Annie, please, can you read the Creole parts of my poem? So I read the English lines and she read the Creole lines. And people kind of were like, what's going on here? Because again, it was a short poem and it was over. But again, it was like the style of Gwendolyn Brooks. We had to recreate this poem. So, and I really wanted to write it in Creole and English. The joke about this is that I was born in England and when I went back to Sierra Leone, I didn't speak Creole and they used to laugh at me. So I've had to work really hard at speaking Creole. And I now try to write also in some things in Creole because we were not taught, we were not allowed to speak our language at school. So I speak, I write Creole very badly. I read it extremely badly. I'm learning how to do that because I think that that was a disadvantage of being part of the colonial system when we were punished, if we spoke any of the indigenous languages, we were not allowed to read it or write it and we were not even allowed to speak it in school. So I'm reclaiming my language. And so when she asked me to read in Creole, I thought, yes, I made it. Somebody believes my accent. But that colonialism follows because even though I wasn't brought up in Sierra Leone, my parents were totally adamant. You are not speaking it. Well, my dad, my dad is Creole, my mom's timid in Mende. So that was like three languages in the house. My dad said, I can't speak Mende or timid. I'm a Creole. But this is not gonna help you in school. You have to speak English and you have to speak proper English. And none of these dropping your T's at the end of work. Like you hear people say on the TV, none of that. So that colonialism follows because that is what they were taught and they told us as their children, there's no way that you're doing that. So when you put Creole in your poems now, is that some kind of a rebellion almost against that? Yes, that's my decolonization. And I make sure the Creole, and that the Creole has to come before the English version. So I have a poem in my collection and it's my grandmother speaking to each other. None of them, neither one of them spoke English. One spoke Creole, one only spoke Mende and Timid. So they couldn't even really speak to each other. But I had to make them speak to each other in the book and they both spoke Creole. And then I translated it into English. I mean, we were talking about Maya Angelou and Still I Rise. There's something that spoke to me so deeply. And so I translated it into Creole because I felt that it pertained all the things that were happening in Sierra Leone at that time. And the biggest, the most amazing thing that for me is that I was able to perform and Still I Rise in Creole to Maya Angelou and she loved it. That's for me, that's my, you know. That was something that was absolutely amazing. We're gonna come back to Wild Imperfections now and he's going to read another poem in a second. But while she's looking for her poem, it's a very good time for me to say that Cassava Republic Press is running an initiative with the pre-orders, where I believe it's the first 500 people to purchase, have their names inscribed in the first print, print run of the book. So if you want your name immortalized in the first edition, Scandaba Code, buy the book, another reason to buy. And the UK version is being published on the 30th of November. The worldwide version for the rest of the world is coming out in February 2022. You ready, Eddie? Yeah. I was gonna read a different poem. I've got three poems in the book, but after something that Khadija was reading about children, I decided to read this one that's called Empty Cradle. My mother had given up on me. I did not get married till I was very, well, I was in my late 30s and she thought nothing was gonna happen there. And then I couldn't have children and we tried and tried. And I would see people with their children and the longing and the feeling, why not me engineered this poem? It's called Empty Cradle. The thing was also wherever you went within the African community, they would go, why haven't you got a child yet? Well, I understand inspecting your stomach and sometimes they're even so rude as to touch your stomach to see if you were really pregnant but not saying anything and you can't keep going on to everybody about it. So this is called Empty Cradle. Joyful announcement, their angel child. Oh, what a picture, what a photograph. Rockabye baby, no bundle of joy. Silently cradling my bundle of pain, searing ache for lost precious child. Nothing. Lightweight heavy in love hate her arms. They cannot conceive. They do not know the brutal cruelty of perpetually failing. Internal clock ticking, a tick tock, tick tock, longing for that missing child. Nothing. Children, children everywhere. Pregnant women smoking, drinking, beach ball bulge proudly thrusting. When the wind blows, creaking, kicking, punching, coveting that special child. Nothing. Desperately counting calendar days, coaxing tired love hate machine erect. Crying, hurry, hurry, do it now. A million baby kisses I'll deliver. Praying, aching for a heart child. Nothing. Waterlogged ovaries, fallopian tire tubes. Legs strung up like hunks of meat. Cells dividing on clear plastic dish. Cradle falling as the bow breaks. Conceiving clinically a spirit child. Then nothing. Heart rapidly beating a tattoo of hope. Spark of fragile humanity lighting. One day pregnant, then bleeding hell. No cradle to rock. Departing your fantasy child. Nothing. Hear me, angels, Mother Mary all. Frenzied rhythm of despair pounding on hasock, pew and chancel floor. By the light of the silvery moon. Cursing dreams of miracle child. Nothing. Heart burning ashes smoldering. Flickering flames of desire dying. Cruel reality. An empty womb. Aged clock will never strike one. Dream child. Heart child. Desired child. Nothing. Heavy. And it is important, of course, to talk about these stories because that also links with one of the tattoo poems that you did. And there are other poems in the book that talk about loss. They talk about miscarriages. And when you read these things, for those who have been through it, you're seen. There's some release in the fact that you're not alone in this thing. For those who haven't been through it, you see. And you're able to understand other people better. And that just brings home the importance of poetry, the importance of this tiny snapshots that we have on single pages or several pages that holds you for a moment and keeps coming back to you in the way that it reflects the realities of those around us and our realities too. We're going to hear a poem, a recorded poem now from Ulumide Popuala, who is a Nigerian-German writer, essayist. She's written short stories, a novella, a novel, a play. And she holds a PhD in creative writing and curated Berlin's inaugural International African Book Fest, Ulumide Popuala. Hi, my name is Ulumide Popuala and I'm super excited to be part of Wild Imperfections. It is such a wonderful collection of women's writings and women's writers who are fears, who challenge and most importantly also who bring the joy and the fierceness. I'm going to read a poem called Show Me. Let's not be strangers to each other, locked away by distance, not the physical but the not showing, believing ourselves half behind, not caring as in a verb, as in allowing to grow and be and feel each other and ourselves. Let's not be strong forever and fierce, kicking asses like we do. Let's fall apart on the kitchen floor or the lounge, put in the bedroom, hidden away with the blind shut but in full view of each other, wailing and shouting and raising ourselves. Let's not be self-sufficient and capable, those that make things happen, taking care of nothing today. Let's be shameful and silent, not resisting or carrying our children, not plotting and making it through. Be broken in all pieces without putting back the jigsaw. Let's listen carefully, not to the words which we are so good at uttering, precise and relevant. Let's be quiet and hear the pain, the heartache, the tired of it all. Show me and from there, the ground we lie on, we can see the world above. Let us not be strong forever. Let us not be strong forever. I mean, good admonition. Let us fall apart in full view of each other. That whole idea that we own ourselves, all of ourselves, without the performance is something that pervades a lot of my work. And when I look at the title of this book, Wild Imperfection, that whole thing, I think there was a line in there that said, let us be shameful and silent. And for me, that immediately brought to mind, yes, wild. And all the pejorative connotations of the word, particularly when they're used with Africans and black women. And so this is a question for both of you. What does it mean to you that title Wild Imperfection? It's funny, because I like the way it's actually written, you know, with the imperfections, with the I am crossed out. And it's like, we can't always all the time be perfect. And why should we? And in some ways, it really also spoke to how black women are perceived as you touched on because we're always told that, I've had some very weird things said to me sometimes. Just in terms of maybe if I've been somewhere, and just say at one stage, I was trying to lift a small table into the back of a car. And I saw, I'll call him a young man, standing there asking him to help me. And I saw him help this blonde lady help something into a car, but her. So I said, oh, do you think you can come and help me? He goes, but you're a strong black woman, like my mother. And I kind of thought, you can imagine what I want you to say. I really needed some help. And I'm thinking, I've been back 20 years older than her. Just come help me, will you? Do you know? And it's kind of like, why are we always expected to be strong black women? Yes we are, but not all the time. We cry, we are vulnerable, like everybody else. And this book allowed us to do that in a sense. It was like, I felt like I was in a safe space to be able to do that, to be able to be vulnerable and be able to say things maybe that I didn't say. That's why I'm really glad that Natalia picked the really short poem about the communal, about the water and connecting communally. So it's a really important title to have because I think it just, it basically says, it's given that those different senses of what women are, of who we are, should I say, we are perfect and we are imperfect. And that's quite all right. Yep, it is. For me, I love the title as soon as I saw it because when you talk about a black woman, it's the angry black woman. As soon as you sort of say anything that is your opinion but you say it strongly, you don't even have to shout but immediately they assume that you are being angry and wild and flamboyant. And it says all of these things that are sort of sometimes seen as wrong. So it's imperfection, but by crossing it out, the I am, it says all of those things are part of our perfection, part of who we are and that we can cross out the things we don't want, we're not waiting for you to tell us who we are. So for me, it's a beautiful, beautiful title, very clever. It says so much if you want to read into it but if you can't read into it, it's your loss. And Clay, there's a strong element of reclamation of the word wild as well. And with that, I'm interested in how, if at all, you both in your work consider reclaiming language that have been used against us. So any of you. I think in some ways we've touched upon that when we were talking about the Creole and the English and stuff like that, because that is definitely reclaiming language. So for me, the reclaiming language definitely is the reclaiming the African language a lot rather than thinking of reclaiming different particular kind of words to describe something. I'm always trying to encourage other people to use and reclaim that language as well because I sometimes feel it's really, I've judged a couple of competitions before. I think I was one of the first judges on the Brunel poetry prize. And I was a little bit disappointed that none of the African writers wrote anything or used any African words in any of their poetry. And I thought to myself, even if the poem hadn't been that good, if somebody had done that, I would have picked them. Honestly, I really would have done. You know, judges, at least is why you've got to know who your judges are because it would have shown that they are number one kind of reclaiming, but identifying themselves in different ways. And sometimes when I am in Gambia, I've heard some of the young people, they speak it, they'll rap, and they'll rap in about six languages. It's great. It's lovely. And it's just bringing that whole different flavor and really kind of showing just how strong you are being able to bring in all of these different tones of yourself. So I think it spreads wider than just your language. Once you claim your language, then you start claiming who you are in all aspects. I mean, I look at us, we're wearing things that show our African-ness in a variety of ways. There was a time when you would not have seen a single African looking material on the stage because you would have been expected to dress and speak in a certain way. So once you start reclaiming your language and saying who you are through words, you start seeing who you are in all sorts of ways. Yes, it can be bright. Yes, we can. You know, when I was in England in the 60s, if you wore an African costume or even African material, the looks that you would have, and they'd go, you're so wild, you're wild. And so on. And you would sort of only keep it to certain times when you were at a party of your own kind, whereas now we can go out and wear what we want to wear, we can have our hair and twists or braids or whatever. And it comes from us having the words to explain, to say who we are. So it marries, it's all part of this opening up of people in the diaspora especially, because this was happening if you were in Africa or somewhere, but if you were in America or you were in England or Germany, you try to conform in all sorts of ways but in your speech, in the words you use and the way you dress. And just as a follow-up to this reclaiming conversation, but also to the poem that Ludwico Poilai read, that whole thing about being able to fall apart. A lot of times we talk about strength and then we talk about vulnerability as the vulnerability is the opposite of strength. When in, for me anyway, a lot of times vulnerability itself is strength. I guess it takes a lot for you to be able to allow yourself to be vulnerable. And I often ask women who and what is a strong woman for you because we have the trope. Most of us don't believe in the trope. Most of us hopefully have moved to the point where we don't want to have to endure things, we don't want to endure just so somebody can call us strong black women, but we still, there's still something about strength. You know, strength of characters, strength of whatever. There are still strengths that we aspire to. So I'm always interested, and this is a, I'm stretching it out so you can think about it, but I'm always interested in the journeys that people have made in terms of women, especially have made in terms of conceptualizing strength, what you thought it was, and now with a passage of time and experience what you now think it is and how that new conception helps you to be a better woman. But it's interesting that you say that because I've been thinking about that recently in respect to like my mom and like, I'll just drop in, Hint, Hint, I'm doing this event tomorrow around Noel El-Sadari, which is gonna be at the British Library online. If people want to join us, it would be great. And I loved Noel El-Sadari from the first time I met her. I went to an event and it was in Paris because I wanted to have her on the cover of my magazine, Sable, all activist writers on the magazine. And when I saw this Egyptian woman up there and I was just hearing her say it is roomful of women because I think it was international women's day event. I'm Egyptian, but I'm also African. Egypt is in Africa. What is this Middle East? I thought, I love this woman. You know, and I thought, you know, these are the kind of things we expect. You know, we want particular icons to encourage people to say. And I've always really admired Noel El-Sadari in terms of saying what she wanted to say and just really, you know, in her work and personally. I think she was just amazing. And then I always used to give the copies of Sable to my mom. You know, just as a matter of fact, I just give them a bit of everything. So like, you know, I'll go and give them a lot of imperfections. I don't know if they're gonna read it. They might just look at the cover. I have no idea. But then all of a sudden, my mother started quoting Noel El-Sadari to me. And I'm like, when did this happen? You know? And then my mother would drop little hints like she was fighting back. And I said, and you know something, you know what your father said to me? And you know what I said back? And I'm like, my mother, my West African mother, coming from this space where you just do what your husband tells you to do. And my mom's fighting back. I'm like, wow. So I saw a new strength in my mother that I never saw before. You know, but it was a quiet strength as well. And then I had to rethink that when we were children, you know, my dad is quite a silent type, but very strong, you know, and quite silent. But my mom was there being the protective one, which we never saw really. And then I'm older. I start to think about the strength of my mom and how she had to protect her children, how she had to be the wife that my dad wanted her to be that, you know, perfect African wife as they want their wife to be, but also be herself. How, where did she get to be herself in all of that? You know, so yeah, that whole spectrum, unlike you, I like to think things more on the spectrum. You know, how it's a big one to think about. We don't always think about it at that time. Sometimes we'll think about it years later. Are you talking about your mother? I see a lot of us, we have a strength in age. I find myself much stronger now. I'm an old woman, whatever old woman is. But I feel that I'm free to be who I am. And if you don't like it, move out of the way. And that's a kind of strength that we're not given when we're younger, you know, and I see, and then I start thinking about my mother and the strength that she had that we did not always recognize. I mean, it's a strength of going into a room on your own, you know, because we always thought you'd go with somebody else. It's a strength to say, this is what I want to do, whether I'm 70 or 90. It's the strength to say, yes, I can sleep all day if I want, but I can sleep for one hour if I want. It's my choice. Nobody can tell me who I am or how I should behave. And so there's lots of strengths, quite strength, a loud strength, a strength that says, this is my space. Don't cross it. And that goes for the society. It goes for your children. It goes for your husband. Make your space and claim it. And that's a strength that we are developing. But I think that a lot of it comes with age as well. And I am claiming my strength. Thank you. There is a poem in, can I borrow your book? There's a poem in this collection by somebody who I came across for the first time reading this. But in terms of language, in reclaiming language, I felt like we, her name is Julie Jakota and this is a poem called, Weapons of War. And it goes, cheap is a word for goods on sale to lowest bidders. Sister, is your daughter for sale? Cheap is a tool in an armory crafter to control, brand, and weaponize the only thing its owners see in a woman. Their knives loose, fast, easy. Their guns cheap, tramp, slag. Their bombs whole, slut, cunt, sister. Don't take off those arms. Don't ever let these words cast down your baby's eyes and fall from her lips. Mom says I'm cheap. Don't use their crude cudgels to butter yourself and your sisters and maim the tender minds of our precious daughters. Don't be defined by their tragic limitations reduced to a twisted, worthless misfit of a fraction in their maneuvering little minds. Sister, break from your bondage. Run from a victory that is your defeat. Lay down those vile word weapons of war and come. Celebrate, cherish, nurture, and defend the totality of the wonder that is woman. Julie Jakota. It's just a wonderful discovering other women poets like this. It's, you know, I did that with new daughters of Africa as well. And I was going through things, and I discovered as well looking for other poets, so for after poetry, Juliana Bitek. And I just kept seeing the name. And I thought, Juliana Bitek? Oh my gosh, she must be related to Bitek. Of course she must be. And then I'm emailing her. She goes, oh yeah, I'm the daughter. And she's also a poet, published a few collections. And I'm going, I really want to get hold of the original version of your father's book. Is this possible? Because it wasn't originally written in English. Because you had it side by side in the two different languages, didn't you? Yes, that's what we are trying to get. And so again, it's just discovering, it's very hard, it's harder, I think, to discover those kind of things. If you're not in the world of an anthology, then you kind of discover those things, which is really fun. And yeah. I mean, in terms of discovery, Annie, we have a request from someone named Jen online who has said, you know, you've mentioned, feel I rise in the view of several times. Are you going to read it for us? Unfortunately, I don't have it here. You do have another poem in the book. Yeah. Would you read that for us? OK. This one is called Because I Am a Girl. And this came about when it was the International Day of the Child. And it reminded me of my own rebellious youth, because I was such a tomboy. And I was forever being told how I should behave as a girl. And this is what a girl should do. And I sure was not doing it. So because I am a girl, I work and play with my friends. I look at the moon and dream of being a teacher, doctor, or scientist, maybe a judge. But I fear these dreams will never come true, because I am a girl. Because I am a girl, I am lost in my family, but always first, up to cook and clean. Boys bully me. Men desire me. Teachers ignore me. First out of school, there's no more reading, writing, solving equations, because I am a girl. Because I am a girl, I know my education, vital passport to the future, will fade away. A body still juvenile forced into marriage to bear babies, while the watery moon wanes and mourns a lost childhood, because I am a girl. Because I am a girl, I will fight to follow my dreams, gain strength, and wear fearless shoes on the path of discovery. Learn to embrace each day, find wings to soar and fly, enabling me to be all that I can be. Because I am a girl. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any questions? And that is questions about, thank you, questions about this, questions about being involved in anthologies and publishing in poetry or writing communities which both these ladies are part of and which they organize. It's your time to ask. Hi, thank you so much for the conversation. I really enjoyed it. My name's Ifia. And I was having a conversation with someone earlier about identity. And my question is, through either this specific work that you published or just your work throughout the years, what has it taught you in terms of your personal journeys of identity? Who started? Your older, you started. And as I said earlier on, I was born in England and then taken to Africa. And I found that I had to find my identity, really, because when I got there, I didn't speak any of the language. Everything was strange. And I had to find my own way into becoming a Sierra Leonean. And that goes even to the language which I didn't speak. My identity is that I am Black. I am Sierra Leonean. I'm African. I'm English. I'm all sorts of things. But that makes me unique. I am not one thing. I refuse to be put into a box. So when they say, when you have to fill in these forms and they go, Black, African, or Black, British, I'm thinking, for me, I'm Black British with African roots. Somebody asked me about where are you from. And I said, would you ask a Black American where they're from? Because they'll tell you, you people stole us and brought us here. So why do you always have to ask us, where are you from? And not accept that we are part of this. This is part of my identity. I am Black, African, British. That's my identity. It's funny when you're talking about the tick boxes. I usually tick cover. And then I write down whatever I feel at that time. Yeah. Usually, I identify as Sierra Leonean. Sierra Leonean were born in Britain. You see, even now I'm stumbling, because I change it all the time. My cousin just asked me to do a little talk for their group next week on Black history. I said, fine. And this flyer arrived, and there's three of us. And for some reason, they put British poet. And I said, but I never gave that information to you. So do you want to actually take that off and then send me back the flyer? Because how could they decide on that to me when I didn't give them that information? So for me, yeah, it continually kind of changes. But when I was raised, when I was brought up, myself, my brother, my sister, we were brought up by private foster parents. I put the word private just because it was very different from the social services being public. And that happened to a lot of West African children in the 60s. And it's more like the same way they do at home. And you give your children to somebody to look after. They thought that they're coming to England. And they didn't really know what was going on in England. And they were working. And they thought the best thing to make us even better would be to bring us up by with English parents. And they used to choose working class English parents. And so I used to horrify my parents when they heard us talk because we thought very cocky. Well, I can't say cockney was brought up in Kent. But it's like, well, how did our children get to talk like this? We thought that they were going to speak like the queen. And they didn't because they didn't know that. So our identity was very mixed up. And you can actually tell that I like in my book. And sometimes I'm having food to eat and loved English food because we were brought up with a working class English family. And my mom, my foster mom, was a fantastic cook. All these great Sunday dinners and apple crumble, apple dumpling. And I've got this poem that I stuff the apple dumpling in my mouth. And I couldn't get the spoon out because I just loved it so much. And that's how I did. But I also loved Joll of Rice. By the time we were like seven, eight, and I was in London. And my brother was only like nine. And my mom accidentally put 15 Trinidad peppers into a big pot. So she was going to make another pot to dilute it. My brother ate it. So that's the African in him, right? You've got to get rid of it. You talk about identity. There's so many things to identity. But yeah, I usually make it up as I go on. My parents were very strong on us knowing our African identity. Because although we were born here, the story in my family is that my sister, who was older, we were in the bus. And we were the only black people in the bus. It was in the 50s. There weren't very many of us around at that time. The wind rush had just come two or three years before. And my sister apparently said very loudly, oh, mommy, look, look, a black man. Because she hadn't seen very many people. This conversation went on. And my mother was trying to quieten her down. And my sister would go on. And my mom said to her, well, daddy's black. He said, no, he's not. You're black. No, I'm not. I'm English. My mother went to him and said, these children are going back to Africa. Within six months, we were back in Africa. Because they wanted us to understand that although we were British in a way, we were also African. And we were also, it doesn't matter how British you think you are. If you're walking down the road, they will see you where they might not see somebody who was Polish or Italian and separate them. So my parents took us. And although I've got cousins who came back to England to go to school, my parents said, we're doing our schooling in Africa. We're going to know who we are. And then we can go out. And we have the basis. So that's why my basis always is, no matter where I am, is that I am black. I'm African. I'm Sierra Leonean. And then British. Yeah. And when I hear both of you speak, I think about that quote by Toni Morrison, where she says something about, I stood at the border, stood at the edge, I claimed it at a central, and let the rest of the world move over to where I was. And that whole thing of when I make it up, as I go along, I don't have to answer the question. Because I've stopped questioning myself. I'm all of those things. Yes. I'm very much a Pan-Africanist now, for me. And so I'm glad we have an Echo West passport, because I move around in West Africa quite a lot between Gambia and Sierra Leone. So people often think I'm Gambian, but I am a Sierra Leonean. But you know, we're part of it. Even when you're in Gambia, they say, oh, you're all part of the same. We're all one family. And they will identify. So my surname is, my mother's maiden name is Sasei. And I took that on board, because it was an African. I wanted to be fully, exactly. So they identify that with what that, in Gambia, of which family that goes with it. Oh, you're Sasei. Oh, so you're part of the two arrays then. So they can identify you. Like that. So I have a place in the Gambia. OK, OK. Just because mine is Domingo. Do we have any other questions? Whilst you're thinking about it, would you like to read your other poem, please? This last one is a bit like myself. It keeps changing. This one is called Stilled Tragedy. Photographer arrives in Congo within minutes of her loss. Dead baby granddaughter in her arms. Hot tears, warm body, cocooned by family of women. Their tragedy and grief encapsulated for a contest. A moneyed prize of thousands. Who wins? Photographer arrives in Haiti within hours of her distress. Send zoomed in snaps of ripped flesh. Separated limbs, rubbled homes, tented grief. Children with no hands to wipe away their tears. Sent by satellite to the newspaper waiting on standby. The first to transfer this agony to the world. No contest, the prize. First on the scene, front page news. Pat on the back. Money via backs. Who wins? And it's only right that we read an Italian mullibazzi poem since she did the work of editing this collection. This is a poem called Lessons to Learn from the Anthology. And it goes like this. I do not know how to receive love, meaning. I do not know how to live. I do not know how to dance, to love, meaning. I do not know how to be human. I want to learn these lessons. Walk like I own the entire city and the body I live in. Choose the battles of my heart. I want to learn the game of counting my blessings. And remember that life comes with no manuals and no wings, but with the desire to craft them. And have a little fun, maybe. I want to thank you all for being part of our audience on site here in the Knowledge Center at the British Library. I also want to thank those of you who are watching online. I hope you enjoyed the discussion. And thank you to our panelists, Khadija Sasei. Thank you. And Annie Domingo. Thank you. Both Khadija and Annie will be signing book plates after this session so that those can be put in your books if you're ordering books by pre-order. So please wait around, speak to them, get them to sign. Annie also has books here. So please. You too? No, no, I didn't know your books were here. Oh, yeah. The surprise is that it's just about to be launched. It hasn't been launched yet. So you're getting the first bite. It's launched on Friday. So Annie has books here, too. So please, they're on sale outside Dubai. See her for signature. I also have books on Zimi to sign. But thank you again so much for being here. Take a salary public press for this beauty. We can't wait to actually hold it. And feedback. Very important, but often neglected thing. For those of you who are online, there is a link. Please let us know how you found the event. Those of you who are here, there are QR codes outside. Please scan them and let us know what your feedback is, because it is invaluable to us. If you would like to support by donating, please consider joining the Royal African Society, which will ensure the continuation of Africa rights. And on that note, good people. Thank you, and have a good day. Thank you. Thank you.