We are delighted to introduce Eric Ngalle Charles, our international writer for our Many Voices writing group with Fife College at HMP and YOI Polmont. Eric will take part in the group’s closing event on 1 June 2017 alongside Sarah Short, who has been running the writing workshops.
My names are Eric Ngalle Charles and I was born in Buea, Cameroon on the 29th November 1979. I was not always known as Eric Charles, I went with my maternal grandfather’s name which is Mosre Mo Ngwa, loosely translated to mean ‘Dog of Dawn’. When father Francis baptised me in the early parts of 1980, then my name was changed. Eric is the name my mother Calls me when I have done something wrong, Ngalle she calls me when it is time for a reward.
It has a taking me over sixteen years to be able to write about the various incidents that took place back home in my small village of Wovilla, in Buea, Cameroon that saw me living my village at such haste. In doing so, I became a victim of human trafficking and ended up with a one way student visa to Russia instead of Belgium. It was only when I arrived in Malta that I was told: “Mr Charles, unfortunately your visa does not allow you to transit in Malta, you have to go to Moscow as you have just a one-way student visa.”
I am a poet, dramatist and novelists and I run Black Entertainment Wales, an Arts organisation that provides a platform for artists in the BMEs communities to showcase their work.
Since then I have edited and published Between a Mountain and a Sea, Soft Touch, Nobody’s Perfect, and Festival of the Wolves – poetry anthologies by refugees, other migrants and indigenous artists in I collaboration with Hafan books and Dr Tom Chessman.
My first play, My Mouth Brought Me Here, was showcased at Encampment in London Southbank on the 4th of August 2016 (pictures below). It is a play based around my poetry and an Old West African Proverb and it explores the themes of migration, language, freedom of expression and dictatorship.
This play was performed at the Hay Festival this year on Tuesday the 30 of May 2017.
I have been recently added to a List of 30 individuals selected globally to bring change into the world.
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