Adiela Akoo -   The    Backstory

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Cobbler's Daughter,

Hairdresser's Muse,

Doctor's Wife

 

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Adiela Akoo was born on the 4th of May in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, to her creative artisan parents, a hairdresser mother and a cobbler father.


Her love for reading and writing stems from her mother who also wrote poetry and encouraged her at an early age. Besides weekly trips to the local book exchange, her mother cut pictures from old magazines and stuck them in an exercise book, as prompts, and had her write about them daily. Her parents divorced when she was still very young and this was her mother's way, as a single mum, of keeping her daughter occupied while she was away at work.


Adiela's lifelong dream was to be a doctor, to heal people, perhaps due to the many occasions and long periods that her mother spent in hospital, during which time she was placed in the care of her maternal grandparents and aunts. She worked very hard and excelled at school, topping not just her class but the entire standard (grade), year after year, thus winning the prestigious Dux Award (Valedictorian). She was also voted in as Head Girl at her school, Brindhavan Secondary, in Chatsworth, Durban. She went on to be accepted at one of the top universities in the country, the University of Cape Town (UCT). 


As a full-time student, she took on weekend jobs as a cashier to help pay for books, transport, meals, etc., but it was not enough and when she saw the strain that her mother was under to keep up with the exorbitant fees, she walked across campus to the admin offices one morning and promptly cancelled her registration.


She went on to work for a bank and was given a double promotion in the first six months after scoring 94% on an exam. By her third year, and four different branches across the country later, she was headed for senior officer level, a position, she was told, that generally took 20 years to reach. By this time, however, her family had arranged her marriage and her husband preferred that she stay home and not work. She reluctantly conceded. But with the onset of her husband's persistent bouts of ill health at the time, she was soon studying various modes of comprehensive healing therapies, which led to her being appointed as the Provincial Coordinator for an international musculoskeletal healing association, after scoring the highest (96%) on an internationally judged external exam and being one of the first six people to qualify as a practitioner in the province. She held this position, which allowed her to volunteer her services from home, for five years, while also assisting her husband with admin work and raising three precious children.


Adiela continued to write whenever she could during this time but never considered it anything more than a hobby and a means of catharsis until she met one of her former English teachers at a reunion who posed the question: "Why aren't you writing? YOU should be writing!" When she responded that she had in fact been writing, her teacher asked again: "Then why aren't you publishing?!"


That was the initial catalyst, but she didn't pay too much heed until life, yet again, threw several bricks at her in quick succession, threatening and shaking every foundation she held dear, until she was practically cornered into publishing Lost in a Quatrain - a select collection of soul-stirring poetry, written over an 18 year period, with each poem telling a story that pieces together the puzzle of this crazy, not always romantic, experience we call life...


Adiela has now been published in a variety of journals, anthologies, and magazines across the world including the Best Emerging Poets of 2019 series and the Best New African Poets of 2020 and 2022 series. She was honoured to be nominated as one of the Top 7 'Most Promising Literary Influencers' in the Global Book Community Awards 2020, to have her poem 'Whiplash' quoted in The House of Parliament, and to be a recipient of The Silver Star Award from the Global Literary Society for her 'excellent contribution to world literature'.

 

 

She was also honoured to be the exclusive guest of veteran South African journalist and author, the late Farook Khan, on his popular local radio talk show, '90 Minutes with Farook Khan', which combined an interview with poetry reading from her debut book; to be the guest of honour at the opening address of the MSA of the University of KwaZulu Natal, Pietermaritzburg campus, where she had the pleasure of interacting with promising young poets; to be a judge at the Zee TV Miss India South Africa International Pageant; a guest speaker at The Alan Paton Literary Festival and The Madibaland World Literary Festival; among others.


Adiela believes that the best thing about being a writer is having the capacity to touch the heart of another being with your words. So it brings her immense joy when readers respond to Lost in a Quatrain by saying,

"I love this book, it touched my heart',
"This helped my soul heal",
"This book made me smile... and cry",
"I felt as if you were writing about me",
'This is soul food"


But mostly, she is deeply grateful to still be able to fulfill her childhood passion to heal people, albeit through her writing...