Fathers’ Story Week is designed to help your school or other setting use fatherhood as a hook for learning activities, and for reaching out to dads and getting them to take part in school life.

Here is my endorsement

The word father carries such a stigma. In a lot of the workshops I have delivered to both children and adults the word father occurs like a four letter word. But if you cut through this emotional field and open the person up their human truth you are left with a residue of possibility. It transforms their relationship they have with themselves. These results express themselves through language. For this reason I made sure my daughter had her own library from the moment she could speak. A full Ikea bookshelf of books. I wanted her to have a vocabulary that would always let her have the freedom to express how she feels. The book we used to love to read to each other was The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. To me it was like a manifesto to always give her the best parts of me. I want her four letter word for me to be love. For this reason I whole heartedly support Fathers Story Week. – Nick Makoha

What happens in FSW?

You can create whatever activities work for you. Here are some simple ideas you could try:

• Invite dads in to read to the children
• Run a dads’-and-kids’ sports day
• Hold a Father’s Day assembly and invite all the dads
• Ask dads to read a favourite story to their child, and get the child to write about it
• Get the children to draw their dad and write a story for him

Register for the fantastic resource pack!

For just £20, the official FSW pack contains everything you need to make Fathers’ Story Week go with a bang, with exciting classroom activities matched to Key Stage 1 and 2 National Curriculum and Early Years Foundation Stage learning and development targets – and whole-school events to help you engage with dads.

For £40 buy the FSW pack + The Dad Factor CD + 10% off a Dad Factor INSET training course for your school/ organisation

The Dad Factor is our support package for schools, including a one-day course for up to 15 staff (price £1,400 – normal price £1,550), and our CD guide to getting fathers involved in their children’s education (normal price £15)

The Art of being a Father for 

There’s an art to everything. Take mowing a lawn, riding a bike, eating with chopsticks to name but a few. How about the art of being a father? Where does one go to master this craft? Especially when they had no father around. This is a common statistic found in many households that migrates across class, culture and continents. I have a confession to make, I am one of those statistics.

At the age of one my life was blown apart by my mother and father’s separation. What followed was a constant stream of arguments (usually down the phone or in letters), custody battles, money disputes and them using me as a pawn as they shifted me from country to country and boarding school to boarding school. On the bright side, I racked up a lot of frequent flyer miles by the time I was sixteen, but that was tethered by the fact that, most of my life worth could fit into a suitcase. I never stayed anywhere long enough to call it home. Every time I’d return to my mothers flat in Peckham it was as if the walls had shrunk Alice-in-Wonderland-style.

TV is the dialect of a lonely child. Every house I lived in had one. I’d watch sitcoms, game shows, sports, cartoons, anything just to lighten the mood. When Superman is telling you in Arabic, he will save the world, you believe him. I watched TV looking for my father. He was always my hero. I wanted him to save me from a world without him. May be then I could have learned the art of being a man before my daughter came into my life.

I didn’t want to be to her, what my father had been to me. The fear of being my father’s son had gripped me. My relationship with my partner almost went down the tubes in that first year after my baby’s birth. It was tough the arguments, money disputes… you know the drill. I was turning into the absent father myth. Soon I would become my daughters Hero trying to save her from a world without me. So I had to make a decision, what was more important the argument or my family? When you are argue and you are wrong it is arrogance, when you argue and you are right it is pride. Relationships are not built on the foundations of who is wrong and right. The grounds of a good relationship is love. In every child’s mind, there is a space, where their father should be. In this space he can teach them to ride a bike, mow the lawn, eat with chopsticks….  The art of being a father is being there.

Nick Makoha, in Association with mac birmingham and Pippa Frith Present

The day Nick Makoha realised he was going to become a father, he also realised he had no idea how to be one… an honest and moving story about the journey from childhood to fatherhood. Directed by Benji Reid.

‘A fantastic piece of theatre…Makoha’s performance is raw and captivating’

- UoBlogfest

Set across continents and eras, My Father & Other Superheroes follows one man’s struggle to come to terms with the responsibilities of being a parent and his confrontation with his own father’s absence. Follow Nick’s journey as he discovers what it takes for a man to become a hero, and how a hero can be just a man.

Recommended Age: 11+

Directed by Benji Reid. Supported by Contact.

Dramaturg: Cheryl Martin.

This production was originally developed at Spokelab, Theatre Royal Stratford East.

Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Workshop Opportunities: The Hero in You

The Hero in You is a collection of workshops and outreach activity that can be tailored to work in a range of settings including schools, youth groups, community groups and businesses.

The Hero in You aims to creatively source the ingredients of successful heroic icons by answering the question “What makes them fit for purpose?” All workshops are around the themes of fatherhood, identity, heroes, poetry and drama, aiming to demystify the myth behind popular icons. Each workshop will find a bespoke way of investigating the ingredients of a Hero. This combines with the show’s social aim to expand on the themes of being a father and to celebrate fatherhood.

These workshops are available for a variety of age groups and levels. Please direct enquiries to

Location: Culture Lab, Newcastle University
Time/Date: 5th May 2012, 16:00 – 17:30

From Aberdeen to the Isle of Wight, Out of Bounds takes the reader on a sensory journey, providing a vivid alternative map of Britain as viewed by its black and Asian poets. Featured poets include John Agard, Wole Soyinka and Jackie Kay. We are delighted to be welcoming Raman Mundair, Kayo Chingonyi and Sheree Mack to help us launch this new anthology. Join us in celebrating the arrival of this fresh addition to the British literary landscape.

Tickets for this event are priced at £6/£4 (concessions)/£2 (Newcastle University students). You can find tickets for all of our events at our webstore.

For further information please contact Melanie Birch on: Melanie.Birch@ncl.ac.uk or 0191 222 7619.

Join me and the other Parnassus poets. The Poetry Parnassus Launch will be on the 26th of June at the Purcell room. I enter as a delegate on behalf of Uganda but I will be just as excited as you. Show me the poets

Related show

• Artist: Nick Makoha
• Tour: Poetry Parnassus
• Date: Tuesday, June 26th 2012
• Time: 7:00pm
• City: Nick Makoha in London
• Venue: Southbank Centre
• Address: Belvedere Road SE1 8XX
• Venue phone: 0207 960 4200
• Country: UK
• Age restrictions: All Ages
• Buy tickets
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‘This book really redraws the map of Britain: away with taxonomies of hurt – welcome cartographies of worth

From Aberdeen to the Isle of Wight, Out of Bounds is a newly charted map of Britain as viewed by its black and Asian poets. It takes the reader on a riveting, sensory journey through Scotland, England and Wales, showing the whole country from a fresh perspective. This extensive and ground-breaking anthology – with its sudden forks in the road, and its roads not taken – stops off in the Highlands and Islands, skirts the North East coast from Whitley Bay to the sands of Bridlington, wanders lonely through the Lake District and Yorkshire, climbs the mountains of Wales before descending to the Black Country and Southern England. Along the way it takes in lochs and landmarks from Glasgow’s George Square and the Angel of the North to the London Eye and the Long Man of Wilmington. An alternative A to Z of the nation, a new poetic guide, the book enables us to look again at the UK’s local and regional landscapes and the poets who pass through them.

Out of Bounds is a definitive anthology that brings together new and established black and Asian writers and places them firmly on the map of what is great and not so great about Britain. Includes: Shanta Acharya, John Agard, Patience Agbabi, Moniza Alvi, James Berry, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Vahni Capildeo, Merle Collins, Fred D’Aguiar, David Dabydeen, Imtiaz Dharker, Bernardine Evaristo, Khadijah Ibrahiim, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jackie Kay, Tariq Latif, Sheree Mack, Jack Mapanje, E.A. Markham, Daljit Nagra, Grace Nichols, Louisa Adjoa Parker, Michelle Scally-Clarke, Seni Seneviratne, John Siddique, Lemn Sissay, Dorothea Smartt, Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, Benjamin Zephaniah, and many others.

Editor: JACKIE KAY is one of Britain’s leading poets and Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. She is one of Britain’s best-known poets, appearing frequently on radio and TV programmes on poetry and culture. Her poetry books have all sold thousands of copies, while her fiction (from Picador) has been massively popular. Her other Bloodaxe titles include The Adoption Papers (1991), Darling: New & Selected Poems (2007) and The Lamplighter (2008). James Procter is Reader in Modern English and Postcolonial Literature at Newcastle University. Gemma Robinson is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Stirling. She is the editor of Martin Carter’s University of Hunger: Collected Poems & Selected Prose (Bloodaxe Books, 2006).

full article and the poem Beatitude go to Words of Colour

Nick Makoha describes his poetry as “weird”. The Uganda-born, London-based poet has been honing his craft for nearly 12 years. Makoha is one of 10 new poets selected for Spread the Word’s Complete Works development programme, which led to the Ten Anthology (2010).

He recently toured his one man show My Father & Other Superheroes about absent fathers. The former resident artist of Spoke-Lab and writer-in-residence for Newham Libraries explains to Joy Francis his inspirations and why poetry can transform young people’s lives.

How would you describe your poetry? My poetry is weird. I’m a poet in exile as a lot of my poetry is about being from somewhere else. T. S. Eliot has been described as a metic, one who writes of his experience of living in another country. All my writing is about the experience of being in another country and feeling that you belong to both at the same time.

What drives this sense of otherness for you? Although I have been writing professionally for over 11 years, it is only in the last four yeas that there has been an awakening in my consciousness about what I’ve been writing about. I am from Uganda and I’m here because my parents were forced out under the Idi Amin regime. Even though I have a Western consciousness, part of my thinking is African, which occurs to me like a ghost.

As one of 10 contemporary UK poets selected for the Complete Works development programme, you were mentored by eminent Hungarian poet George Szirtes. What was that like? It was like meeting a wizard. His first words to me were “Nick, I will always be there for you”. He was looking for an authentic poet. I don’t know what that is but the programme is finished but he is still a phone call away. You have to understand that as a writer you are contributing to a lake of voices. I’m talking about T.S. Eliot and Shakespeare in Western culture. In Asian culture it’s the Haiku writers. In East Africa you have the orators. The mentor, in my case George [Szirtes], opens you up to that lake and gives you a ground to stand on.

You are director of the Youth Poetry Network. Has poetry been used by the young people to reflect on the riots and how they were covered? Not directly. We take some of our young poets to Chicago as part of the London-Chicago Teenage Poetry Slams. Late last year we took four young people whose theme was the riots. I am about what young people can do, not what they can’t do. We do that through language and self expression. This gives them confidence, which then gives them the ability to think about what is possible. That is what the Youth Poetry Network is about.

You recently toured your one man show My Father & Other Superheroes about absent fathers. Why this theme? I want people to bring the conversation of the father back into the household. When the father is stigmatised, you also stigmatise the family and the mother. I wanted to address this in my own life and in wider society. It started when my daughter was born. I realised that I didn’t know how to be a father and this flaw was something I was uncomfortable with. I have two children now.

Do you think there is a poetry revival taking place or is it still a struggle? There have been revivals in the past. I would say it is more of an awakening. Shakespeare spoke in the colloquial language of his time. You can relate him to rapper Jay Z, who also relates to his community but also transcends his community and has gone global. When you highlight this to young people, they begin to see that they belong to a continuum of language and that language is a catalyst for change. This language, including poetry, belongs to everyone.

Related show

• Artist: Nick Makoha
• Tour: Southbank Poetry Magazine Launch
• Date: Wednesday, March 28th 2012
• Time: 7:45pm
• City: Nick Makoha in London
• Venue: Poetry Cafe
• Address: 22 Betterton St WC2H 9BX
• Venue phone: 020 7420 9888
• Country: UK
• Admission: £5/£4 including a copy of the ma
• Age restrictions: All Ages
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The Public Reviews Rating: 

On a dramatically lit, smoke filled stage, Nick Makoha conjours his childhood heroes. These are the mentors that taught him all the important things in life. The Hulk proved you could be tough but still control your anger, Batman taught him not to be afraid of the dark, Superman feared nothing but Kryptonite, Luke Skywalker…well, he just proved it was worth holding out in the long search for your dad.

The eight-year old Nick felt a lot like Luke. A little Ugandan boy, batted around the world “like a ping-pong ball” from his London-based mum to boarding school in Kenya, and then to Saudi Arabia, home of his errant, philandering father. But for all the absent years, lonely weeks at school and lack of birthday presents, Nick’s dad never quite lost his hero status.

Makoha’s own introduction to fatherhood has been the catalyst for this piece of autobiographical storytelling. And it’s a beautiful story worth telling. Makoha’s physical performance is astonishing, from lonely eight-year old to alter ego KnightWarrierNinjaKing, he becomes the characters in his story through simple, powerful movement, light and shade. Makoha draws in his audience for a mesmerizing hour, inviting us to share his childish delights, his disappointments, his isolation and his joy.

My Father And Other Superheroes is part of Contact’s Flying Solo 2012 season which celebrates “the ability of a single artist to captivate and hold an audience” through live art, spoken word, theatre, intimate performance and dance. Makoha’s performance does exactly what’s promised. A rare skill, indeed.

Runs until 7 March 2012 - Reviewer: Jo Beggs  for  The Public Reviews

Daddy Cool:  

Nick Makoha presents My Father and Other Superheroes here on Wed 29 Feb at 7.30pm, followed by Lies About My Father from Phil Ormrod. The combined ticket price for both shows is £10 & C:£8 . Tickets can be purchased from ARC Box Office: 01642 525199 or via the “drama” or “spoken word” page.

Nick Makoha & Phil Ormrod will be performing separate pieces around fatherhood and the various issues it can sometimes entail in a double bill of entertainment within one evening at ARC’s Theatre.

1: My Father & Other Superheroes: 

The day Nick Makoha realised he was going to become a father, he also realised he had no idea how to be one. My Father and Other Superheroes is one man’s honest revelation of how pop culture raised him in the absence of his father. Audiences will follow Nick’s journey as he discovers what it takes for a man to become a hero, and how a hero can be just a man.
This moving and powerful story about the journey from childhood to fatherhood is set across continents and eras, following one man’s struggle to come to terms with the responsibilities of being a parent and his confrontation with his own father.

2: Lies About My Father: 

Lies About My Father by Phil Ormrod tells the story of Phil, who, once upon time, told a lot of lies. This caused more problems than he had anticipated, and wracked with guilt, having alienated his friends, his family, and most of the staff at Tesco, he ran away for a day and a half, intending to spend the rest of his life as a wandering minstrel (or something). When he realises it was actually all his dad’s fault, it changes everything. This one man show is about the stories we tell the world to get what we want from it, the difficulties of being a father or a son, and the impossibility of growing up.

Related show

• Artist: Nick Makoha
• Tour: My Father & Other Superheroes
• Date: Wednesday, February 29th 2012
• Time: 7:30pm
• City: Nick Makoha in Stockton on Tees
• Venue: ARC
• Address: Dovecot Street, TS18 1LL
• Venue phone: 01642 525199
• Country: UK
• Admission: £10 Concs £8 Senior :£5
• Age restrictions: All Ages
• Box office: 01642 525199
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal