K. Morris's Blog, page 787
March 8, 2014
“Watch you smile while you are sleeping”…
Originally posted on 
March 5, 2014
Author Interview: Presenting, Kevin Morris.
Many thanks to Kev Cooper for allowing me to be his first author interviewee. I look forward to reading more author interviews on Kev’s blog.
Originally posted on Kev's Stuff:
Here it is folks, my first video interview. Links to Kevin Morris’ stuff can be found below.
http://newauthoronline.com/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B00CEECWHY
http://www.amazon.com
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6879063.K_Morris/-/e/B00CEECWHY
March 3, 2014
A visit to Africa
Thank you A.!
‘For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place
Maya Angelou
I went to Africa on a whim. I woke up one day and realised that I just needed to be somewhere raw and real, doing some hands on work. I was tired of writing, tired of the city and just plain jaded. A twenty something year old should never be that way. In that state of despair, I suddenly remembered an old friend from when I had lived in France and got in touch with her. She had promised that whenever I gathered the guts to go to Africa, I should write to her and she would make it happen. She put me in touch with a nun who worked on several projects in the interiors of Tanzania. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know what I would do, where I would go and how long I would be there for but I just knew I had to go.
My trip was planned in less than 2 weeks – the tickets were booked, the injections taken and my mum loaded me with herbal anti malaria balls. I am a control freak and had decided that since I was taking this leap of faith, I might as well go all out and do no research. Instead, I decided to embrace whatever came my way, just as it was. Before I knew it, I was packed and suddenly found myself in a small bedroom sized airport that had a dilapidated old sign that read “Dar es Salaam”.
I was grinning from ear to ear, which made the visa officials really suspicious till they realised I was just plain crazy. I was shuffling about in a room packed with tourists. 50 dollars later, I had my passport stamped and I was free to wander about the great wilderness. I went out of the airport-room to find myself surrounded by highrise buildings, beautifully tarred wide roads, Mercedes Benz’s just cruising about like they just didn’t care.
Brilliant!
I had just taken off from one city to another. In fact, this city had a 3G phone connection, something even good old Bangalore, IT Capital of India, didn’t have. I was very dissappointed. The nun met me at the airport. I didn’t really know if anyone would come pick me up but I was glad she was there. We took a very luxurious taxi while I stewed inside myself. And then I suddenly found myself in a busy bus station, people everywhere trying to haul bags off you and load them into local buses. I managed to escape most of the crowd, dodged little kids pointing at me, saying “Mzungu, Mzungu!” (which is the Kiswahili word for “white person”) and got into the smallest bus in the history of the world.
I don’t mean small literally, it was a big enough bus on the outside. But when you got in, the seats were so cramped together that even a short person like me had to sit with her legs up on the seat so I don’t hurt my knees. I was stirred out of my thoughts by the nun putting her hands on my shoulder and saying “Are you okay?”. Apparently I was smiling too widely for a first time visitor. Shouldn’t I freak out?
“No, this is my childhood dream come true! Why would I be anything but ecstatic?”, I wanted to say. Instead, I tempered my reactions and was lulled into sleep by the moving motion of the bus.
I went to Tanzania, assuming I’d be there a month. I stayed a whole year. And in that time, I lived with the Maasai Tribe, lived on the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Worked at pre-schools, clincs, and orphanages that spanned the country. And while my experiences make for exciting stories to be told over a drink or to be written in a Lord of the Rings Saga, it is something I will never have words enough to explain.
I was lucky because I didn’t do the touristy things. I moved from project to project, living with real people, experiencing life as a local and instead of waxing ad nauseum, here are a few photos that will paint a better picture.’
Monduli Mountains and the Savannah
Local women campaigning for their local leaders
Local Market
The Black Mamba
Sunrise at Tanga
Pink Lake – Ngorongoro Crater
‘After Auschwitz’ by Anne Sexton
I am not very familiar with the work of Anne Sexton but this is an extremely powerful poem and the explanation which follows it is masterly.
Originally posted on A poem for every day:
Anger,
as black as a hook,
overtakes me.
Each day,
each Nazi
took, at 8:00 A.M., a baby
and sauteed him for breakfast
in his frying pan.
And death looks on with a casual eye
and picks at the dirt under his fingernail.
Man is evil,
I say aloud.
Man is a flower
that should be burnt,
I say aloud.
Man
is a bird full of mud,
I say aloud.
And death looks on with a casual eye
and scratches his anus.
Man with his small pink toes,
with his miraculous fingers
is not a temple
but an outhouse,
I say aloud.
Let man never again raise his teacup.
Let man never again write a book.
Let man never again put on his shoe.
Let man never again raise his eyes,
on a soft July night.
Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.
I say those things aloud.
I beg the Lord not to hear.
I don’t think many readers will fail to be shocked by this poem. Its grotesque images and daring treatment of subject matter that seems untouchable for a poet certainly shocked me when I first read it.
But I think the subject matter is carefully chosen specifically to that end – to shock and hold our attention. The words “Auschwitz” and “Nazi” can never fail to do that. Spell-like, these words are capable of instilling horror even in those who were born decades after the events, because they conjure visions of man’s worst atrocities; a vision of pure evil; the Devil inside us. I think Sexton is using the imagery of the Holocaust to amplify (and in some strange sense that I can’t quite qualify, to validate) her own personal trauma. Plath does the same thing in her poetry (Daddy is the perfect example). Of course, this poem (as the title suggests) is a response to Auschwitz. However, I think it is also a more general reaction to Man’s inhumanity, and perhaps also the inhumanity of men. Sexton was surely influenced by the Vietnam War, which was going on at the time of writing, and by events in her own life, such as her divorce, and her struggle with depression.
March 2, 2014
A Thank You
My collection of short stories, Street Walker And Other Stories was free, in the Kindle Store from 25 February until 1 March. During the free promotion Street Walker was downloaded a total of 84 times (well give or take a download either way as I find it difficult to read the sales reports in KDP Select. Am I the only one who has this difficulty)! Irrespective of whether the number of downloads was 84, 83 or 85, many thanks to everyone who downloaded Street Walker. I hope you enjoyed reading my book and I would love to hear what you thought of it. Thank you also to all who reblogged the free promotion bringing it to the attention of a wider audience. The mutual assistance of bloggers is one of the great things about social media!
You can find Street Walker And Other Stories here, http://www.amazon.com/Street-Walker-other-stories-Morris-ebook/dp/B00HLRNDP4
March 1, 2014
Broad Universe Wikipedia Project
Originally posted on K. A. Laity:
Hey kids! Want to help raise the visibility of women writers of the fantastic? With trumpet’s blare, let me unveil:
A Broad Universe Project for Women’s History Month: Women Authors on Wikipedia!
Women artists made a concerted effort recently to get more of them written into history. More people turn to Wikipedia than to any other source. Women are still largely missing unless they are the few really big names in history. Here’s Mary Shelley’s page. It’s fairly comprehensive, but there aren’t enough 20th C women with the same detail. Comprehensive is great, but every little bit helps.
Only 2% of the users edit Wikipedia. A huge percentage of them are male. And as time goes on fewer people are doing any editing, so diversity is bound to be an issue.
Sad Steps By Philip Larkin
I came across this poem several weeks ago on Youtube and have meant to post a link to it for some time. The link is to the Poetry Foundation rather than Youtube partly owing to me not being enthused by the rendering of Larkin on Youtube, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178054
February 28, 2014
The Free Promotion Of Street Walker And Other Stories Ends Today (Saturday 1 March)
The free promotion of my collection of short stories, Street Walker And Other Stories ends today (Saturday 1 March). If you would like to obtain your free copy of Street Walker please visit either http://www.amazon.co.uk/Street-Walker-other-stories-Morris-ebook/dp/B00HLRNDP4 (for the UK) or http://www.amazon.com/Street-Walker-other-stories-Morris-ebook/dp/B00HLRNDP4 (for the US).
