The African Origins of UFOs, Salt Publishing 2006


The African Origins Of UFOs
The African Origins of UFOs, Salt Publishing Oct 2006.

A genesis: A few years ago I was feeling particularly homesick, I always get homesick around Febuary, carnival time in Trinidad. I was reading a tourist guide to Trinidad and came across a story of something that happened in 1837 when an African, Daaga led a revolt...'and they set off to walk back to Africa'. This line haunted and intrigued me, it became the genesis of this book. I saw Daaga and his people getting into a spacecraft and flying over seas to an Africa they can never find, an Africa that no longer exist. Just as no place stays the same once you've left it, like the Trinidad I left behind. So I wondered if UFOs were really Africans like Daaga, still trying to find Africa all these years. To this idea I added a heavy dose of metafiction, mythology, Jazz, surrealist poetry, autobiography and science fiction. And then like Ishmael Reed says, 'it jes grew'. It grew to 24 chapters that move from future-present-past, a movement and number inspired by Timothy Leary and Ornette Coleman. In anycase, Lauri Ramey has done a beautiful introduction that explains more about the logistics of the text than I ever could.

The best place to buy it is through the publishers Salt Publishing. BUY IT NOW.
But you can also get it from Amazon


In the meantime, enjoy the selections and reviews below.

By the way, the line drawing on the cover was done by my daughter Meena iere when she was 4. She calls it 'Daddy the spaceman'. Meena, who is now 6, still complains about the royalties she recieved. She has a blog here with more of her artwork.

Excerpts :

Kneedeepnditchdiggerniggersweat

His voice had the deep burrr of a man who kept fishhooks in his beard. So I put on my white muslin jumpsuit, slid sleeves and levers tight, pulled my hair shut with Sirian beeswax and en-route superterranean to Toucan Bay via Antimatic Congo Pump I met Cain waiting with the contraband: 8 grams of uncut Ceboletta X¹. And while Cain stroked a reefer the size of Mozambique rolled in a popadom, I held my head wide open for the suck with a nasal>oral siphon and was so oiled and eager for Joe Sam's return to Houdinis' that night that I sped there, down near the jetty where fishgutfunk fumed furiously and found copious peoples rubbing belly to back, hacking heels; knee deep in ditchdiggerniggersweat .

That naked island funk was steady lickin' hips with polyrhythmic thunderclaps! Does the Berta butt boogie? do bump hips? flip an spin&bop’n finger pop'n/subaquantum basslines pumping pure people-riddim funk like snake rubber twisting in aluminium bucket, reverberating round the frolic house with a heavy heartbeat, causing black to buck and shiver-
WOOEEE! WOOEEEE!-
The very groove caused coons to stumble loose and slide on saturnalian pomade until their conks collapsed. The sound possessed more swing than bachelor galvanise in hurricane, more sting than jab-jab whip, more bone than gravedigger boots and more soul than African trumpet bone - a pure-emotive speed that once improvised harmolodic funk to Buddy Bolden's punkjazz on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain, double bass still reverberating through space-time like long lost Afronauts on orbiting saxophones, the solid sound did shook Shouter Baptist shacks with rhythm, till the Sankey hymns they sung became cryptic mantras that slid like secrets through water.

Up the varnished teak banister, ever Afrodizziac in Indian red, with her high SepiAfro, far-east eyes and blood black morello lips borrowed from a jealous mirror, Madame Sweetbum peeps then leans back on her ass for support; puffin' good genk and inspecting vinyl imprints in dry blue light, releasing slap after slap of the raw-boned and ancient Afrolypso she kept in aluminium sleeves, sacred 45s so sharp rip slippers off feet till steam hisses from her radiogram.

Madame Sweetbum had negroes wringing brine! her hi hat kickin fat back an'brass- swingin’-black be boogiefull, black be slick, cryptic hustlers an' assorted Cyberpimps in stingybrim fedoras, scissor-tongued vipers in snakeskin brogues, in pleated pollywool zoots with sawed off buckshots in their lapels, nubile Supian ladies throwing waist like whipsnake ,slip slide/rabid-eyed by stiff crotched coons in erection boots, leaning at the bar boppin' bulbous foreheads an’burnin for flesh.

Meanwhile Mokotux Charlie climbed the stairs like a calliper with his clipboard, mop and megaphone. The old bush coolie ran the place with the rep n'grace of a gamblers' tears. Molasses black with a face like an unfinished woodcarving, tight brown suit, cockroach killer boots, white handle razor behind an ear for peeling more than toecorns and a voice that suggested a rusty trachea. Charlie liked to grin in that ol'island pimp style, revealing 10 teeth brown from 55 years of Trini pepper, chewing nush and home-rolled cigars.

He also ran severe erotique noir upstairs where the rooms smelled like dried pussy, where cum crusted facerags lay under the beds, where the curtains drooped dank and butter greased while his ladies charged by the pound; your weight plus theirs in cash!

Charlie hummed as he shovelled spum from teledildonic booths and wiped his pros with paraffin. Prime pros-with lineage through ancient iere; pork-legged jammets and melon swallowing domestic cleaner types with devious profiles, big bone dada mamas whose hips re-tuned bedsprings to the B flat of authentic colonial brothels. Some wore names like Yvette, Rose, Daphne and Gemma who'd just arrived on Kunu Supia from some floating island behind God's back and she would even let you lick her mastectomy scar.

Killer Joe


Si dieu les a fait noir
c’est qu’il doit y avoir une raison.
-Anon

Joe Sam was so bad even catfish shaved to meet him:a man so fierce he wore his boots inside out\African spaceboots, Nigerians used them for terraforming, Joe Sam used his to kick afrosaxons and smuggled his black butter irregardless. Bad like crab an spoken of with contempt in multiple dialects of intergalactic niggaspeak, banned from six floating isles for ultraviolence, subversive texts and possession of genetic contraband, upright and devious, with a stare that saw through bones-his instantaneous cuss was so cantankerous it would cause concussions! So gifted in the throat with a Baptist minister's grimy tone, his aural pyrotechnics would hypnotise negroes. He manipulated deft verbs and lingual tourniquets with ferocious grace, supplying palefolk and tourists with prime niggum vitae. A callous, transgalactic pusherman, suave an so slick with a flick he filled veins stiff with liquidessence and drove a chrome Mesakin Congo Pump with antimatic injection. Ever dapper in devious strides and astrocamouflage dashikis, Joe Sam's hustle was the cusp of voodoo funk technology: bootleg melanin to keep pale niggers ticking on Kunu Supia!

Joe swore lineage to ierean ancestors who were rois and dauphins in secret slave militias, belly marinated with the bile of cocksmen and killers from Corbeau Town to Cuttyville junction. Men with wooden carbuncles and full heads of hair, they shaved with cutlass blades. Copacetic men who nyam pigfat, mandrake root and forceripe tamarind for breakfast then buck waist and break fast an spit- revolutionary spunk in your sisters eye from a radius of 360 Uncle Ben Blacks, coming from the genus of mythical beasts from back in old Iere when stickfighthers still ruled the ancient barrackyards. Hill-born soldiers with cast iron gorgon organs and bois dipped in asafoetida sulphate, underarm renk with rancid paraffin copper.

Saliva
trickles
from the lisp of a 12 fingered manchild tugging a kite in Aranguez savannah; with a razorbladed tail to cut and send other kites over the Samaan trees then run home watch: Electric Company, Love American Style, Carnabas Bollins and Puffin' Stuff, Voyage to the bottom of the Sea- they had no broughtupsy; would suck pus an hit big man mad bullpistle then rub stinging nettle on dey prick, would hunt snakes and whip lizards in half against orange trees with masonry twine.
Soulman pusherman skank to Mikey Dread, bust carbide and smoke tampi, bust cow face with broomstick, hog head with tree-trunk-looting the city while the revolution blazed!
grow dread : upset the ol’lady.

Who convinced Gallstones Grandfather Buckmouth that drinking lil'boy urine would cure his cataract but then put mentholated spirit in the old mans' hibiscus tea and grew up to be legends with monikers as sublime as : Dr Rat, Cutouter, Gooter, Siparia Scipio, Catpiss Pepper, whatever happened to Newland Blake?, Mitagau? or anyone a dem rubber wristed bois swingers with hollow scars stolen from the gayelle. Big strong cocoa-prick man like Joe Sam so could sit in a hot funky latrine,in a canecutter shirt, sun cutting through galvanise like Michael X pelting chop and smoke basiments of caustic ses'an' sip flour-porridge; bus' toe bounce steppers who had afros since the 1940s and would catch bullets there-much hair. Sharpboned jaw box go crack cocoa pod and coconut, bust tamboo bamboo, strip cane, shake skulls and squeeze out butterwax, break man back with 2x4 pine, restore blacknuss, plot guerrilla ballistics, peel back bullshit, stew black justice, high browed on Ju Ju physics, sip breast milk, cowmilk, duck egg and oyster, grow gut and full Pharaoh Saunders beard 'til it grew grey and long so would wrap around standpipes and Baptist flagpoles, but by then coming down from hill to town to tumble in teargas became impractical, and bad for bunions.soon swamp dogg sang for them on sunday morning as they reclined on verandas sipping rum and lime, body weak from revolution.





Secret Underlung

But there were haters who grumbled at Joe's return. And in the brisk underbelly of night, savage native neck lockers crept in shadows with sharkbone daggers, in lurk for Joe arriving. They snuck and steupsed 'round Houdinis', peepin'neat the dank stairwells, grinding malice for Joe.
to blow his soul. to bust
his secret underlung.

His modus upset some post earth negroes who believed inner:disembodied blacknuss and they bemoaned Joe for his blackdada retrograde. They claimed that Black as a concept of being was only ever relevant on Earth, and even then was suspected as the mindset of a con that pat afros down and kept negroes terra bound to suffer(when we coulda been interplanetary from way back).

they said Black was dead. "Black as in the tones of Nuyorican niggerpoets ranting militant in ancient days, earth long, livin' in cold water Brooklyn warehouse space, no food but Fanon, no cash but Jackson, back then them rhetoric was hip and OnTheOne 'cause subversive boots and dreader guerrillas were needed on the urban battlefields and word was sword, shield and dagger, even ancient Iere had gun in Dashiki and afro intellects bust plenty police head with oratorical gas but not now we swimming in heaven"

With such consummate scripts these antiessentialists wished to reverse polarities. But blackpeople didn't want to hear that shit! 'cause in their folly these fools grew lame limbs and underneath/otherwise appeared impervious to funk. The ONE would hit them in the chest like this (!) and they wouldn't understand it. Prone to pork they'd lick pigfat off the floor when no one was looking but they wouldn't understand it. Their ears would ring with trans-genetic texts and they wouldn't understand it.
Drums would tumble with insecret textures and they wouldn't understand it.
And if they could they would eradicate Joe.
Or blow his soul or bust.
His secret underlung.

But on this side of the supian sea, the most feared and ultraviolent spooks were the Abobos. Mix no matters. They were the mutant progeny of terraformers who churned in geothermal mines till sun bust their genome codes in the Kilgode desert and they and their kin become the pure black dada anihilismus. with eyes that shone like sunbeams through smooth onyx bone!- who put caduceus 'pon dem pineal gland/ dem who deepblack like coalpot bitumen from scalp to sole, with skin the texture of calfskin leather.

They wore crocus sack jumpsuits-jute! or raw kapok silk, they snuck devious with burnt steel sabres, dry ice blades, ‘savage’ ‘inhuman’, They roamed grim retrotech cat-o-nine tails.
They wanted to hurt Joe. Real bad. To suck the marrow from his thigh bone.
Firstly, for heresy. And too, with perilous envy of the slick ease with which Joe Sam rolled billfolds in Toucan Bay from abobo oil bootlegged in the Kilgode desert. Till Joe come over the mountain, they spun this hustle and now say Joe greed for niggegeneseed leave plenty Abobo folk to pine. like magga wood, but Joe say he deals it upright an proper/never leave them dissatisfied. Aboboman insists he needs be broke down + Diba was a dada to nine.

Two abobo them rappin' in a gully 'neat Houdinis' in their crude basilect:
"I hear Joe Sam kill 20 man with Idi Amin jawbone-all was Spyro Gyra fans" "is so?,well Laro if you dead I go bury your clothes,but me,I 'fraid"-if Joe clap I feel I go duck-my lil'iron cyar ramp with a man like he an get me eye bus' like Diba”. “tha's good talk Bucky, let Penco give charge, cause when Joe ketch rage 'e footey kill all a we!"






Hummingbird

Witness this pure liquid text
spun from fragments of genetic memory
Earth long. Vintage Caribbean gold. Of ancient iere
before the flood.
remember when cocoa panyol grease was as thick as earwax?
an' dead eye jumbies hung like mannequins
by strands of cobweb'd sadness
over negroes brisk grinnin, lindy hoppin
to naked island jazz in tenement discoteks
or busy rubbin thigh to bone'n bonin broko-foot mattress makers
in pumpenginejitneys?
‘member when in seablast an' salty bars on the plaza marina
hairy toothed slum lizards washed their hands in turpentine?
and switched blades to bleed
an’ pimps did bump all year but in february
pawned their jewels for sailor mas or sequinned spears
to hunt nile crocodile
on the sunbleached streets of old iere city?
rem’ber when mama wrapped navel string in bacanoa leaf
and buried it under
a gauva tree?
and sealed the belly
with a knot,
and sealed the knot
with crushed insect bone.
when al green shivered then moaned, cause Mr Champ
was on the deck
well was to see them spirit rise!
from the steaming bush to dance
and more cousins keep comin over the hills
with flambeau blazing
for babash rum an’ brown chicken rice.
Remember when scarfaced panmen carried machetes
under their fingernails and sharpened bones with quadraphonic steel. It was still tribe against tribe when the steelbands clashed
and blood, bile, phlegm and rum
would run through alleys and gutters through ravines steep with pantywash and afterbirth tissue
dragging trampled masks and broken headpieces, slits of glitter,
to the river.
Now only the river remembers when cariban indian first cartographed this land
and called her
ï e r e


Excerpts from the text are also included in the anthology Dark Matter: A century of speculative fiction from the African Diaspora', ed. Sheree Thomas, Warner Books and the journal Hambone edited by Nathaniel Mackey.


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REVIEWS:

Anthony Joseph might be the Ishmael Reed of our region and our generation. The poet, whose first novel, The African Origins of UFOs, was released in 2006 by Salt Publishing of the UK, has turned a corner with this latest effort. Part memoir, part sci-fi story and part poem, this book is a delightful but difficult treat for readers who aren’t afraid of a little excitement.
Lisa Allen-Agostini, Caribbean Beat

For the full review see Caribbean Beat Magazine (Issue 89) SELECTED REVIEWS OF "THE AFRICAN ORIGINS OF UFOS"

...his book is unlike anything else I have read in a very long time and I believe it demands to be noted and discussed in Cordite for its arrival on the contemporary Anglophone poetry scene."

The Melbourne-based poet and writer Ali Alizadeh has written an informed and incisive review of The African Origins Of UFOS for Cordite.org.au

'The book’s formal quirks and innovations – including comics-style ink drawings and adequately strange poetic endnotes –complement its discursive and thematic playfulness and complexities. Its general argumentative drive traverses the imaginary domains between a historical past and a fictional future. Towards the concluding sections these domains overlap and produce a philosophical contemplation on the themes of belonging and identity, culminating in the iconography of the UFO as a symbol of dislocation; of being “lost in space, drifting from place to place, still trying find where they come from”.

The African Origins of UFOs conflates a culturally aware attitude towards a collective literary identity with an adamantly individualistic pursuit of – artistic and stylistic – freedom. Its author is both a faithful heir and an agnostic rebel; a Black poet haunted by Africa’s past as well as a bilingual post-modernist amused by the possibilities of the future. Contemporary literature doesn’t come a lot more sophisticated and intriguing than this.'

Anthony Joseph's new book 'The African Origins of UFOs' is a mind trip. This book of poetic prose, at a modest 140 pages, takes you on a voyage that's like Sun Ra meets Iceberg Slim. It tells a tale of contraband, slick dressing gangsters and bounty hunters;Joe Sam, Bo Nuggy and The Spasm Band; all against the beautiful backdrop of Trinidad and outer space. - Straight No Chaser

The African Origins of UFOs tracks the pull of place and the pull away from place, Afro-blue to astro-black and what glimmers in between. “Genetic contraband” and “bootleg melanin” afford a measure of the job it takes on. Possessing or possessed by requisite bearings, language and lore, Anthony Joseph is fully and beautifully up to the task.
- Nathaniel Mackey

Genuinely sensational -- and very finely made.
- Chris Goode

This is great new ‘second generation’ Caribbean stuff – movin away from the script & the scruff – or ratha – betta! – writin upon it – over and under it – a palimpsest to rahtid! – pouring out images like Eno's – or UFOs!!!
- Kamau Brathwaite

Anthony Joseph is a talented writer with a powerful imagination.
- Linton Kwesi Johnson

Vestiges of plot — concerning a galaxy where melanin is exchanged like an illicit drug — are a little transient in a novel the publishers describe as psychedelic noir. They say it blends ‘the diasporic with the avant garde’: if that sounds potentially scary, the rhythmic beauty of the text makes for a surprisingly inviting read. Joseph can recite a staggering 80% of UFOs from memory, and if he happens to be performing near you, he is well worth catching live. This book could almost be a CD.
- www.pulp.net

This is spine-rattling writing that checks L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry and Sun Ra in one! This *should* be 'difficult', but it's entertaining - dare I say it, even a page-turner. Anthony Joseph has an extraordinary ability with words and can do it all - lyrical, bombastic, dialect, abstract. A rollercoaster read! Highly recommended.
- Tom Chivers, Penned in the margins

What to say about this text? Firstly, the book itself, this is a rare thing, a beautifully produced paperback, framed and set with great care and style by the publishers, Salt. And a good thing too. The complexity of the form of the text, if mishandled, would have rendered it unreadable. As it is, flick through prior to reading- will send shivers of anticipation down your literary spine. And by the end, the style does justify the effort spent, indeed it does. I finished this experimental novel with a sigh, of relief and of sadness as I was parted from what had been an intense and difficult experience. This is a sensual book in every sense, olfactory perhaps most prominent. It is a smelly book, one that reeks with the ecology of Trinidad, its central muse. After finishing, I had to go eat a curry goat roti. The introduction to the novel, by Dr. Lauri Ramey, will suffice for a clever analysis of the literary debts and merits of Joseph's style, it is sufficient to say here that science fiction, poetry, and music-infected prose proliferates and intertwines like some crazy spicy noodle soup. Forget the comfortable linear narratives of all too ubiquitous best-sellers, this is original work, honed with a fine, caring eye. It is not only a poetic novel, it is a testament, no superficial work of mere fiction this, where a reader feels truth in words arrayed in this manner s/he must wince, halt, re-read, smile and move on, enriched. Check it out.
- Kemal Mulbocus

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BUY THIS BOOK:

www.amazon.co.uk/African-Origins-UFOs-Modern-Fiction/dp/1844712729/sr=8-1/qid=1164110898/ref=sr_1_1/026-1481964-4350032?ie=UTF8&s=books