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20:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
This week's post is an experiment for One Ghana, One Voice. "How Poems Work", which we hope will become an occasional series on the site, aims to give OGOV poets an opportunity to talk about some of their favourite poems previously featured on the site. Before starting in, we want to take a moment to acknowledge Arc Poetry Magazine's How Poems Work series, which directly inspired this one. We hope you enjoy this offering, and join the conversation yourself.
Note: OGOV is on vacation next week - a new poem and profile will be posted on September 4th.The Sea Eats Our Lands - Kwesi Brew
Here stood our ancestral home:
The crumbling wall marks the spot.
Here a sheep was led to slaughter
To appease the gods and atone
For faults which our destiny
Has blossomed into crimes.
There my cursed father once stood
And shouted to us, his children,
To come back from our play
To our evening meal and sleep.
The clouds were thickening in the red sky
And night had charmed
A black power into the pounding waves.
Here once lay Keta.
Now her golden girls
Erode into the arms
Of strange towns.
The poetry of Kwesi Brew (1928-2007) exhibits a cut-to-the-bone starkness. In his hands, nature and the supernatural are unforgiving in their relentlessness to humans. For Brew the good old days either never happened, or indeed were not that rosy. What is now is what has always been, and this is why his is a poetry at ease with the anxieties of the modern African. Even when it looks back, his work makes no demands for a return to the past; instead it dismantles the myth of a bucolic past. For example, in his poem “Ancestral Faces” the ancestors
slipped into the limbo of time, to watch us, the living, go about our business. In the end
they saw us, / and said: They have not changed. In other words, the ancestors recognised themselves in the living.
Brew's “The Sea Eats Our Lands” not only picks up some of the ideas mentioned above, but also contributes to that sub genre of what
Gerald Moore calls “Africa's rich marine poetry”. Moore rightly mentions
Edouard Maunick (
Les Maneges de la mer, Presence Africaine 1964) and
Jean-Baptiste Tati Loutard (
Poemes de la mer, Yaounde, 1968), but one could also think of
Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang(
Cape Coast Castle, 1996),
Joe de Graft (“The Old Sea Chain”),
Lenrie Peters (“On a Wet September Morning”),
Gabriel Okara (“One Night at Victoria Beach”) and
Kofi Awoonor (“
The Sea Eats The Land at Home”).
Brew's poem captures the gradual decline of Keta, a coastal Ghanaian town, due to marine erosion. It is a tightly locked sequence of three stanzas, each of which begins with a spatial determiner, rooting both speaker and reader into place. For this reason the first stanza starts
here, the second continues over
there and the third brings us back
here. We end where we started, with the persona standing guard over what is left of his ruined home.
Back to the first stanza. The narrator's ancestral home has fallen, he informs us, despite countless sacrifices to the gods. All that is left is the wall, itself crumbling for faults which our destiny / has blossomed into crimes. Though we are not told the specific nature of these faults, we are made are aware that they have metastasised. The problem is first noticed in the home, specifically the family’s sacrificial alter, the point of contact between man and deity.
In the second stanza the narrative pulls back a bit, this time to frame the desolation in both meteorological and metaphysical terms. The reader is immersed even more firmly into what happens when a community gets on the wrong side of its gods. At the heart of this is a multigenerational curse, and all are obliged to serve time, even the speaker’s own father. There are two things peculiar with the curse. First, whoever inherits it comes to the realisation that the only condition that offers respite is childhood. However, since no one can remain a child forever, the curse awaits everyone. Second, the curse is infused with colour symbolism – red and black being the colours of mourning in Ghana.
The clouds were thickening in the red sky / And night had charmed / A black power into the pounding waves. Red is associated with bleeding, danger and things forbidden, and ''appears in various shades at the longer-wavelength end of the visible spectrum''. This community would bleed itself out, and omens have been signposted for all to see, even in the sky. Black consists “optically in the total absence of colour”, again, there is no way out of this. In between
red and
black appears
night, that time between sunset and sunrise. Night is significant here because it is the talisman which activates the sea's destructive impulse, out of sight and far from any help.
In the third stanza the speaker removes himself from the scene, and in what Seamus Heaney calls “the thin quatrain”, focuses on the plight of the community’s women. Even as it swallows everything in its way, the carnivorous sea rejects the town's female inhabitants and only men are allowed to carry this burden. Under the onslaught of the curse, the old patriarchies still undergird conceptions of what contributions women, the other half of the population may make. Theirs is simply to pack and leave, to
erode into the arms / Of strange towns. They are denied any chance to rebuild their crumbling town. It is true that these
strange towns might provide opportunities for renewal, for there they would have the chance to start again, but only at the expense of their own community. The narrator returns to colour symbolism again, and Keta's golden girls would lose their shine and be stripped of their identities once they venture into other towns. Gold, that symbol of permanence, turns to dross under the onslaught of this curse.
By the end of the poem we realise that the poet is telling us a morality tale, complete with a lesson. This is the story of how Keta became its own Atlantis, how all the men disappeared, and how the women survived but not intact. By incorporating the morality tale, we see how Brew absorbs an older narrative structure from the folk tradition.
There are two ways one could look at this poem over all. First, that it is not for nothing that the persona takes us through his history, for his intention is to make us identify and empathise with his town’s destiny. He is aware his gods and ancestral cults have failed him, and realises any positive outcome would have to depend on human agency. His community has come to an end as a viable entity because his people appealed to the wrong kind of god. This is why he is no longer willing to stand by the old mandate and maintain the supposedly unchanging bond between man and the supernatural. Through the power of the printed word he leaves the reader to carry this fight on. He trusts the reader to make an appeal on his behalf, this time to a secular god – the political state – because the resources needed to turn his town’s fortune around are only available to the secular state.
Second, one could argue that the persona is convinced this is the end of the road, period. He takes the time to allow us a peek into his world so that he can pass on the knowledge that no system of thought endures forever. At any rate, when he is gone, there will be no one to worship his old gods. Both humans and the supernatural failed to realise that Keta's problem has always been one of geological determinism, and no amount of libations can turn the sea back. Just as the sea nibbles at the land until there's nothing left, so do whole cultural systems come to end, and when they do, no amount of shoring would hold them up.
While this essay situates Brew’s poem within the African marine poetic tradition, its approach is by no means exhaustive. It would be wrong to think that the seascape poetry of Africa is modern. There is a wealth of material from sea shanties, lullabies and work songs if one pays any attention to the traditions of coastal people. The extract below is my own translation of a Ga folk song:
Wote nsho le naa (We went to the beach)
Fen nye wo (We were cold, so cold)
Wotee woya wu nsho le (We took a swim)
Obi le yagbla tsaani (While your child hauled in a seine net)
Another way to access this particular poetic tradition is to take a close look at the poetry about slavery, For this, one could turn to poets like Tati Loutard and Opoku-Agyemang. Again this is not new. The dirge below, translated from Ewe, is believed to have been composed by captives waiting to be carried off by slave ships. Gbodzo was the name of the local slave trader.
Avie mata na Gbodzo yee (I shall rub Gbodzo with tears)
Avie mata na Gbdozo yee (I shall rub Gbodzo with tears)
Fu nade gbe (The sea may roar)
Ga nade gbe yee (The irons may clank)
Nye wukula meva hade o (The rower has not yet arrived)
Avie mata na Gbodzo yee (I shall rub Gbodzo with tears)
(1)The dirge above offers an insight into the influences of a poet like Kofi Awoonor whose “
The Sea Eats The Land at Home”(the other Keta poem), I urge the reader to take a look at. There is a way in which texts allude to, complicate and enrich each other. Both poems assume a social realist stance, harnessing artistic practice in the service of a common good – the plight of Keta. However, each incorporates different traditional narrative forms to achieve very different outcomes. Brew's narrator, in the manner of a story teller imparting a morality tale, takes an almost dispassionate tone. On the other hand, Awoonor's – a dirge, occupies a more personal imaginative ground, its tone accusatory, and as is the case with all dirges, a complaint against prevailing conditions.
(1) Acheampong, E. (2001) 'History, Memory, Slave-Trade and Slavery in Anlo (Ghana)', Slavery and Abolition, 22: 3, 1-24
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3:49
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One Ghana, One Voice
I ate at my parents'
house: rice and tomato
stew every Sunday morning
'til my father left
with a toothbrush,a Pepsodent
pressed to the middle
and a Geisha soap.
Mother said he had
a six-foot woman
in his leopard-skin bag.
I couldn't remember for I was four.
I now eat at my mother's
house: beans and ripe plantain
on Mondays, fufu and
palm-nut soup on Sundays.
A balanced diet, says mother.
But not all is balanced
in that old house
that leans like a tv pole
after heavy rains:
the chairs squeak -
a couple in dire need
of a walking stick,
the tables are wobbly -
and some have a foot
amputated. And did I tell you
about an uncle who died
leaving behind
a light-blue polo shirt,
size forty-five shoes
with wooden soles
that sit on one buttock,
and an old lantern:
said he got it from
Elmina castle.
I sit in his room
holding my size forty-two foot,
facing the bald head of Nkrumah,
an old wooden table
with a plastic limb,
some literature books
and an old lantern
to burn at midnight.
His shoes?
They are buried
six feet under the bed
with shoe polish and an old brush,
should he need to wear them.
Couldn't fit, shouldn't fit.
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3:36
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Kyere Ofori Reginald was born in 1987 in Kumasi, Ashanti Region. He has an elder sister and a younger brother, and recently completed Philips Secondary Commercial School in Kumasi. He lives at Abuakwa in Kumasi.
Five Questions with Reggie Kyere:
1. You mention Nkrumah a lot in your writing. Do you intend for him to be interpreted as a symbol for something by your readers? If so, what? Does it change from poem to poem?
Yes, I want my readers to see him as a symbol of inspiration, hope and as an ideal African. This remains the same in all my poems.
2. Your poems cover a wide variety of themes and forms. Is there a theme you haven't touched on, but want to? A form or style of writing?
I intend to focus some of my writings on our country's politics and I'm also inspired to write about some adolescent experiences. As to styles of writing, I've picked a couple of them from Kay Ryan and Charles Simic whom I got to know just recently, and I intend to use them in my future writings.
3. Other than a recent poem for the World Cup, we haven't seen a poem of yours for a year and a half. How has your life, both in writing and not, been going in that time?
A year and a half? Wow! I didn't realise it had been that long. The good news is that I have been busy trying to write a novel(inspired by Nkrumah and Ghanaian politics). I wasn't confident at first since I have no training in writing, but I am more confident now. I just asked myself: so what? I also was also trying to get admission to the University to study English but it didn't work out. I have my eyes set on journalism school now.
4. Speaking of the World Cup, with some time and distance now, what do you think of the Black Stars' effort and their prospects going forward?
It was a good performance. Not great, not awesome, not breathtaking. We only got to the quarterfinals and that had already been achieved by Senegal and Cameroon. But the future looks bright.
5. We must ask you this question every time: have you found other poets in Kumasi to share your work with?
Yes, I have, and a couple of them contribute to this magazine.
Contact Reggie:
reggiekyere(at)@yahoo.com
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10:30
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One Ghana, One Voice
All is lottery, doesn't go more deep, got u buzzing but believe me, its just tawdry. Da laws seem to make it orderly, like some formula applies, making it alive, got u looking more keen. Soon u realise u don't recite, it's all extempore from da off, not even da laws, da forms can explore these concepts for sure. Not even da context, another form, a dress makes the load less, yes but soon, u cast your mind behind and find nothing that cuts it, it's all gamble, ya mind's candle can't handle da darkness.
U score a goal, da applause explodes but u know ya show is nothin, soon u get bored. Yes, da law was once a cause to be ensured, an 'of course'; now it's outlived itself, dismissal is what it implores, that is da call of that very law.
Maybe it's all my eye, but I surmise, this thought rides da floors of many, me besides.
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10:16
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Monarc was born in Accra, where he lives to this day. He is a student at the University of Ghana, training to be a physiotherapist. To see him do his favourite activity is to see him do anything, but underneath it all is the one single thing you won't see: contemplation. Yes, Monarc is a ruminant.
Five Questions with Monarc:
1. How long have you been writing poetry?
Since you say "writing," I started about 10, 11. But just creating stuff extemporaneously goes maybe as far back as the womb.
2. Who are your favorite poets? Which poets have most inspired and informed your work?
Poets? Honestly, I did not have much contact with poets young. But, Solomon, David, Jesus (all of whose work I read that way) did engage with me some, especially David who is a poet of the ancients. I did get involved with hip hop and that brought me to writing. Influences are Eminem, Rakim, Tupac. Okay, I might say Baudelaire but I started prose poetry before I met him. And I'll add Henry Fielding and Charles Dickens. To me, their poetic style inspires me to keep complicating my style, my notion of improvement. My inspiration generally comes generally, that is, from anything.
3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?
To be walking around and suddenly a telepathic connection is established between a random kid and me just like the constant seance I have with those ghosts I mentioned.
4. At what venues do you perform your poems?
I perform in my head, in my room, but formerly I performed among friends.
5. Do you perform your poems from memory, or read them from the page?
When I used to perform, I did either extempore or written. If I have to do memory, I'll do a hybrid inevitably.
Contact Monarc:
jedrian12(at)yahoo.com
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11:15
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One Ghana, One Voice
There is a certain new tempo of rhythm
when the old flare of the nomadic is dim
rustling through the thick undergrowth
gnawing at the hearts of African youth
wading through the oceans and high seas
so solemn beyond what the mortal eye sees
on every valley, molehill, and mountain
flowing raw from the prehistoric fountain
Nkoyeni’s cryptic urgent clarion home call
gaining momentum without a sigh of a lull.
Rushing homewards are the youth with gains
albeit the hurdles, untold gory joys of pains
multiplying what Africa lost in the bargains.
When the old lofty barns we now overflow
heighten, our paces home will never slow
then comes the seeping away of the brains
which has finally suffocated the old drains.
There is also another great trek of a new flock
whose genes are not part of Nkoyeni’s old fold
these new creeds now speckle the youths’ pluck
in old sojourns as new trophies returning bold
the other new races now migrate on their own
their returning instincts to Africa never disown
where nuclei human first sprouted life abroad
their climate the foolhardy greed had polluted
their panting thirst for cleaner air very broad
the power of forgiveness, revenge now uprooted
legendary African spirit to accommodate given
the pillage, rape, indignity, forgotten, forgiven.
And I see a new Africa and a new conscience
ascending from the pit of mediocrity to the zenith
sparkling with magnanimity and true patience
bold sages again to look calm with pride beneath
where the savannahs, rainforests swallow the drought
for the pride lands the rains many gains have brought.
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11:09
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Dela Black Bobobee is a Ghanaian writer. He was educated in Ghana and Nigeria. He holds a B.A (Hon’s) English, and a Masters of International Law and Diplomacy (MILD), both from the University of Lagos. He is currently studying for an MBA degree in Management.
His works have received much commendations, recognition and had won him several awards. His hobbies are writing, studying foreign languages, and cinematography. He is a Life Member of the prolific Theatre 15 (University of Lagos), Abuja Literary Society (ALS), and the Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN).
Five Questions with Dela Bobobee:
1. While this poem was written before last week's post on the "brain drain" to Accra from the rest of the country, it is definitely part of the same discussion. Is the "brain gain" this poem talks about happening now, or is it an aspirational thought - something you hope to see in the future?
Indeed, this poem is an aspirational thought. Yes this is something I hope to see in the future. I guess the future begins from today, though.
2. Can a "brain drain" and a "brain gain" occur simultaneously in Ghana, or do they cancel each other out?
Yes, I think a "brain drain" and a "brain gain" occur simultaneously in Ghana. In my opinion they may not necessarily cancel each other because since the variance would only be seen in its geographical locations, it would rather make it look more like a concurrence and not as a conflict.
3. The next two are questions Rob brought up during the discussion of last week's post: In areas outside of Accra, how can we stimulate more interactive poetic awareness in youth?
In areas outside of Accra, we can stimulate more interactive poetic awareness in youth by tackling it from the grassroots. I would suggest a partnership with the existing schools to embark on interactive poetic awareness, Poetry Clubs, Poetry Week, Poetry Prize Day, Poetry Contests etc. I guess things like that would go a long way in achieving that goal.
4. In Accra, how can we take advantage of the "storehouse of ideal poetic brains"?
Yes, Rob actually asked some very vital questions in that forum. It is a pity that the participation was rather lukewarm. Now coming to his question, in my opinion, I believe this would not be too much of a problem because the “storehouse of ideal poetic brains” are already there. The only problem is that they exist in form of sleeping fires that need only a little bit of stocking to turn them back into real smouldering coals. The ashes cover the hot coals and make them appear as dead fire. We can stock the fire by starting something like an Accra Literary Society which would be a forum whereby those with creative talents can come together to express their creativity. We can start from one reading in a month, then maybe later increase it depending on the response received. We can also graduate to an open-microphone reading, which can later on be diversified into different readings. I also suggest Accra Poetry Slam, lectures on various poetry topics which can be delivered by well resourced persons who would be invited, and reading sessions. After each reading, the participants would discuss the suitability or otherwise of the writer’s themes, diction, mechanical accuracy, form, imagery and other literary and poetic techniques. We could even move on to other literary genres since it would not be restricted to poetry alone.
5. You are currently living in Nigeria. Can you tell us your "brain drain" story? And do you think of yourself in that way, as part of a "brain drain"? Why or why not?
Sure. It would be untruthful if I say I don’t have a brain drain story to tell. I guess all the suggestions I am making here would have found actual expression in my physical presence in Ghana. I would have actively participated in forming the nucleus of an Accra Literary Society. Thank God, however, that Lagos is just about four hours drive from Ghana, and about 45 minutes by air. I guess I can always dash home to put some mechanism into action to make that dream materialize. I can contribute financially and would also look for an ideal venue for the meeting, registering the association’s corporate entity, and all the groundwork stuff in creating the awareness. It would be a bit easier because of my previous knowledge gained from Abuja Literary Club here in Nigeria which could turn my "brain drain" story into a “brain gain” tale by moonlight. Many thanks go to OGOV for putting these ideas into my brain. Thanks.
Contact Dela:
delab(at)mtnnigeria.net
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16:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
In August 2008, we made an attempt to "map"
OGOV's poets: to look at where our poets were born and where they are writing from today. You can read that post
here. In the two years since, the number of poets we've published has almost double, from 36 to 69, so we thought it would be interesting to update our statistics and share them with you.
Here are the general results of a review of authors' country of origin and country of current habitation:
Authors by country of origin:
1. Ghana - 67%
2. United States - 13%
3. Canada - 7%
4. Zimbabwe - 6%
5. Nigeria - 3%
Other - 4%
Authors by country of current habitation:
1. Ghana - 54%
2. United States - 19%
3. Canada - 9%
T-4. England - 6%
T-4. Zimbabwe - 6%
6. Nigeria - 3%
Other - 4%
It seems from this that a 'brain drain' of poets from Ghana to other parts of the world is occurring, with a 13 percentage point drop in the share of poets living in Ghana (a 20% drop in real numbers). The biggest gainers of Ghanaian poets, not surprisingly, are England and the United States.
The bigger 'brain drain' of Ghanaian poets on OGOV, though, can be seen when you look at a national level:
Ghanaian poets by Region of birth:
1. Greater Accra Region - 31%
2. Ashanti Region - 19%
3. Central Region - 12%
4. Eastern Region - 6%
T-5. Northern Region - 4%
T-5. Volta Region - 4%
Other - 10%
Unknown - 12%
While Accra clearly plays a leading role in producing poets, the distribution of poets' homelands is fairly even - that is, until you take into consideration the poets' region of current habitation:
Ghanaian poets by Region of current habitation:
1. Greater Accra Region - 58%
2. Ashanti Region - 13%
3. England - 8%
T-4. Central Region - 6%
T-4. United States - 6%
6. Eastern Region - 2%
Other Foreign Countries - 6%
Only 23% of all Ghanaian poets featured on this site reside in a region of Ghana other than Greater Accra, and 23 out of 33 (70%) of the Ghanaian poets born outside of Greater Accra now living in the capital.
Few of the percentages listed above have changed dramatically since 2008. There has been a slight shift away from the "brain drain" - more Ghanaian poets staying in Ghana, and more non-Accra poets staying in their home regions - but the overall trends remain the same. With a sample size that's almost twice as large, however, these numbers can be seen as more reliable than the last batch.
It seems more clear than ever that a poetic brain drain towards Accra is occuring. Is this unavoidable? And even if we could avoid it, would we want to, or should it be viewed as a positive thing? How can we take advantage of having such a large percentage of Ghana's poets in one city?
The conversation is ongoing.
We'll be back to our normal schedule with a poem and profile next Saturday.
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20:24
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One Ghana, One Voice
Disguised as the hoof-note of an ancient Justice,
You gallop through my runnels,
Pounding my daughters into the mud.
Even the moon shields her ripeness from your flares
As you drape my children in tradition's calico.
No! My daughters shall not be cook pots,
To feed the hunger of gods and ghosts;
No longer would they be your hierodules.
I Shwilao* Patron River of Trans Volta, make this pledge:
I shall send, in the beaks of augur-buzzards, a flywhisk of plagues.
This shall I do to you and more,
If you, Trokosi# would not let my daughters go.
If you, Trokosi, would not let my daughters go,
This shall I do to you and more:
I shall send, in the beaks of augur-buzzards, a flywhisk of plagues!
I Shwilao, Patron River of Trans Volta, make this pledge.
No longer would they be your hierodules
To feed the hunger of gods and ghosts;
No, my daughters shall not be cook pots
As you drape my children in tradition's calico.
Even the moon shields her ripeness from your flares.
Pounding my daughters into the mud,
You gallop through my runnels,
Disguised – as the hoof-note of an ancient Justice.
* The Volta River
# Ritual servitude in some areas of the South East of Ghana
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20:14
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
L. S. Mensah was born and raised in Accra, and has been living in the UK for the past few years. Recently her work has appeared in the annual Barnet Poetry Anthology, Akwantuo.org and Sentinel Poetry’s Champion Poems.
Five Questions with L. S. Mensah:
1. The complete reversal of the poem is an interesting device. What inspired it? Had you seen it done in others poems, or did you come to it yourself?
It’s called a "specular" poem. I believe it has been around for some time, but it was Julia Copus who popularised it. Her poems "The Back Seat of My Mother's Car" and "Kim’s Clothes" have become classics in their own right. As you can see from the link, she has a far better grasp than I have managed. Basically the lines in the first stanza are reversed in the second. The only thing one is allowed to move around is the punctuation.
2. What effect do you hope for the reversal to have on the reader?
To enable it to be read another way, in other ways. You have to see this as if through a mirror. When you stand in front of a mirror, you of course see your own reflection. But then again what seems to be your left hand appears as the right hand of your reflection you see.
There is another reversal of a sort, for the narrative is structured around a variation of the oath formula. In the typical oath, the speaker sets a condition for himself. If he ever violates that condition, he suffers the consequences. In this poem, the speaker has set a condition alright. However, it is up to the addressee to meet that condition and if not, suffer the conditional curse.
3. Can you explain trokosi for our readers who aren't in the know? What is your personal experience with trokosi? What inspired you to write a poem about it?
Trokosi is ritual bondage or servitude of women in parts of the South of Ghana, Togo and Benin. Virgin girls are pledged to shrines in atonement for crimes committed by a member of the girl’s family. Her family is responsible for her upkeep in the shrine, and if she should die or become too old before the debt is paid, the family is obliged to replace her with another girl. Shrines could also make these demands in exchange for other services.
Personally I have no experience with trokosi. Really, I come to this topic by way of writing some poems about the Slave Trade. There are obvious parallels here. Back then the loudest voices against abolition were the traditional authorities, because a considerable percentage of their economies depended on the trade. Even after the Abolition in 1807 (British Empire) and later the Abolition Act of 1874 -75 (Gold Coast Colony & Protectorate), they still found ways to circumvent the system. There were courts set up to prosecute anyone buying, selling or even owning slaves, but it was not unusual for owners to bring their slaves before chiefs and religious elders who then administered fetish oaths to bound slave to owner. No slave would dare break this oath for fear of possible (supernatural) consequences. Colonial and court records abound with examples.
The historians tell us that it was only around the late 18th to early 19th century when shrines started to request humans as payment for their services. This coincides with the period just before and after the abolition of the Slave Trade, so the practice is just over 2 centuries old.
4. What is your intended audience for this poem? Ghanaians or global? While obviously you can do both at the same time, do you view this more as a poem that's meant to inform or to persuade? In other words, to inform the uninformed, or to engage in a discussion/debate with those already in the know?
This poem is for anyone, and is meant to serve as a stepping point, possibly for some kind of debate. Whether it persuades the reader is really up to that reader, because when it comes to debates over tradition, attitudes are pretty much set in stone. There is a tendency to create a halo around everything we call tradition, even when it exploits our own people. It becomes an unequal relationship with one side exerting power in all sorts of ways over the other. This is about the material and sexual exploitation of women pure and simple. It is also a class thing. Those who defend the system, including the priests, chiefs and local educated elite usually have their daughters living far away in Accra or in the West. Their daughters and granddaughters would never be bonded to these shrines as initiates. It is left to their poorer relations to carry this on.
5. What is new in your writing life that our readers may be interested in?
I’m waiting to see what the upcoming anthologies from The Ghana Poetry Project and Mensa Press would bring for me. For now I’m working on some more specular poems, as well continuing with my poems on slavery.
Contact L. S.:
tsikata_was_no_tsatsu(at)hotmail.co.uk
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2:14
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One Ghana, One Voice
even when the field is still evergeen
and aubergine plants are the edges
the goal is to put the ball into the net
even when the field is filled with stars
and a pathway glistens blinding the view
the goal is to put the ball into the net
you have done that beyond glass ceiling
the sun is not glandular fever but another glitch
we wait for afterglow and a glass of glucosewater
"The Goal" is the eigth and final poem in our impromptu tribute series to the Black Stars.
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3:37
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One Ghana, One Voice
I saw Africa shine to the drone of vuvuzelas
As eleven black stars sparkled in the soccerfields of Mzansi
Then I asked my merry fellows and the village songsters
“Tell me, why all this frenzy, why all this fancy?”
Then they said, without missing a beat
In their celebration drums
"Blow the trumpet,
the Black Stars of Ghana are doing us proud in Mzansi!"
then I took pen and paper, traced the glow of their beams
in odes of sonnet laughter and sestina glee,
the only way I know of celebrating
as Africa glows in bright Black Star shine!
"Black Star Shine" is part seven of our impromptu tribute series to the Black Stars. Though the Black Stars' run is now over, we will keep posting new poems until July 9th. If you would like to contribute a tribute poem, send it to oneghanaonevoice(at)gmail.com.
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2:00
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One Ghana, One Voice
For a while the street had no smile on its brown cheek
nor a horn or vuvuzela of which to speak.
Hearts wore everything but a humming.
Who is gonna love our women, when all they need is loving?
Who is gonna tell the belly that the food sits starving
or the throat that the palmwine needs gulping?
But the sky is purple
the ball is marble
the water is stone
we who love soccer, with every bone.
Then the wind blew,
the ball took a fondle from a breast
a kick, a header, a shoulder
or was it a chest?
A smack and it's a goal!! Goo...al!!!
Oluwaaaaa...
The sky is blue
a birdie coos
the water is a river and our women moan
a kiss, a fondle, a black star shone.
"A Black Star Shone" is part six of our impromptu tribute series to the Black Stars. Though the Black Stars' run is now over, we will keep posting new poems until July 9th. If you would like to contribute a tribute poem, send it to oneghanaonevoice(at)gmail.com.
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20:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
Countless people glued
To a glass of moving men
The shouts and waves
The screams and chants
Cheering and adoring men of valour
Endowed with skill and agility
Elegantly protecting and honouring
The waving flag of red, gold and green
Dancing to the cheers of a moving wind
I see thousands of flags in hands
All dancing in the air
Waiting for this moment of pride
All white shirted men of the Stars
Running to the corner flag
Dancing to celebrate
It is a goal!
The Black Stars play with no par
Thousand shots off their boots
And a dozen goals take us off the hooks
I wake up in delight
To a reality of beauty and glamour
In the play of the Black Stars
The Stars will shine to the end
"Black Stars" is part five of our impromptu tribute series to the Black Stars. Though the Black Stars' run is now over, we will keep posting new poems until July 9th. If you would like to contribute a tribute poem, send it to oneghanaonevoice(at)gmail.com.
The photo is provided by Nana Kofi Acquah.
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2:00
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One Ghana, One Voice
Like a rainbow streak
The fans fancifully dress
Fashioning a mosaic ambiance
That exemplifies ‘ke nako’
And the stadiums fill
Like a tropical twister
The jabulani twirls and whizzes
Spinning a swell trajectory
That irritates the strikers
And the goalkeepers
Like a work of art
The players string passes and crosses
Showing off a brilliant drill
That finishes off as agooooal
And the elation erupts
Like a buzzing drone
The vuvuzelas blasts and booms
Blurring a symphonic euphoria
That drowns the chants
And the Mexican wave
"Football Africana" is part four of our impromptu tribute series to the Black Stars. Though the Black Stars' run is now over, we will keep posting new poems until July 9th. If you would like to contribute a tribute poem, send it to oneghanaonevoice(at)gmail.com.
The photo is provided by Nana Kofi Acquah.
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20:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
The grief you get
for every hitch and skip
you make, the way you flit
from strikers’ boots
and keepers’ clumsy mitts.
But Jabulani, your few
true moments, glory!
Gyan again, again!!
We hold our lead (and breath)
through every late-game
corner, praying only this:
one honest path tonight
from boot to Kingson’s rising fist.
Oh Jabulani,
the errors we’d forgive
for one last-second,
leaping, latex kiss!
"Jabulani" is part three of our impromptu tribute series to the Black Stars. Though the Black Stars' run is now over, we will keep posting new poems until July 9th. If you would like to contribute a tribute poem, send it to oneghanaonevoice(at)gmail.com.
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4:11
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One Ghana, One Voice
In the midst of so much despair
where all hope seem to be lost
the human spirit seeks repair
from an inner recess, at all cost
in all African villages crowds grow
a lone Black Star hope awakening
as the crowd enjoys the soft glow
of the screen on that cool evening
the vuvuzela sounds like a bee hive
the Hope of Africa is being revived
in the Black Stars of Ghana to strive
but it is the Hope of Africa survived
Nkrumah’s Independence of Ghana
meaningless unless yolked with Africa
so the Hope of Africa musters to garner
hope from Ghana vs. America
one lone Black Star ate all their Stars
so Black Stars shine, black balloons fly
to greater heights to erase the scars
in the skies - the air lifts so sly
Aftermath victory, vuvuzelas so deafening
Kokorokoo! Africa must now unite as one
Nyame Okokoroko, thank you in defending
Gye Nyame! The Hope of Africa is as one.
"The Black Stars of Africa" is part two of our impromptu tribute series to the Black Stars. Though the Black Stars' run is now over, we will keep posting new poems until July 9th. If you would like to contribute a tribute poem, send it to oneghanaonevoice(at)gmail.com.
The photo is provided by Nana Kofi Acquah.
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4:05
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One Ghana, One Voice
Goal!
That is the word we want to hear for here
In this sea of deafening cries
Our emotions reach their highest altitudes
Through good music, good people, good attitudes –
Our team must win, no way around that –
We need goals, goals, more goals:
We must prove that we did not come here to play,
We came to conquer, to seize the day,
To make victory our mainstay
Goal!
I love the sound of that four-letter word, the sod
On which our rollercoaster moods play -
Our affinity to spectacular goals,
The infinity of a good match,
The divinity of our soccer-love drive us
Into states of consciousness where each kick,
Each dribble, each foul, each whistle eat away
Away our patience but still our flags sway
Whether chances go green or gray
Goal!
The euphoria never abates, always lightening
The pensive mood, never failing the ears
As we expect a pass, a shot, a goal
Sudden like bright-afternoon thunder and lightning –
As flashes from a thousand cameras capture
When the ball crossed the line and kissed the net –
The players know that they carry our hopes in each kick,
They know their misses make us sick,
They know only winning will do the trick
Goal!
Love for this game propels the vane of our energies
We will not cease now, we will not sing in vain
As we scream on top of our lungs, veins drawn on our necks
Losing is not an option because too much
Has been invested in this, too much life and love -
If eleven men can send us to soccer-heaven,
We will give them our all, we will stand tall
As they kick the ball, as they rise and fall,
As they win in the long haul
"The Soccer Fanatic" is part one of our impromptu tribute series to the Black Stars. Though the Black Stars' run is now over, we will keep posting new poems until July 9th. If you would like to contribute a tribute poem, send it to oneghanaonevoice(at)gmail.com.
The photo is provided by Nana Kofi Acquah.
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4:04
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One Ghana, One Voice
- dedicated to the late Alfred Kwaku Doe Agbleze
Death looks different on you
Young one that steals from the aged
They say the robbed that smiles steals from the thief
Your smile this day is theft to death
It is a baffle of the mind
It is a break of tradition
In our land
The dead young are supposed to frown
But what is this excitement behind your eyelids
What is this joy your lips can’t speak
Death is ugly
Yours is beautiful
Death is cold
Yours is warm
What is this fire within your body
What is this beauty emerging from beneath your skin
The vultures have lost their flight
There is no wind of pain to lift their wings
The women’s wail is not of pain
It is of confusion
What is this excitement that creeps into the air
What is this peace that comforts the heart
Young one that steals from the aged
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4:00
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Agbleze Selorm was born in April 1987 to Mr. Geoffrey Agbleze and Ms. Akambi Esinam. Selorm is a former student of Mawuli school, Ho and is currently reading Bsc. Agricultural science in the University of Ghana, Legon. He resides at Denu, in the Volta region of Ghana and likes reading and writing poetry as well as engaging in educative discussions.
Five Questions with Agbleze Selorm:
1. Was this poem inspired by a real experience? If not, what inspiration did you draw upon?
Yes, this poem was inspired by a real experience. It was inspired by a wake keeping at which my late brother was laid in state. This was not an ordinary funeral because though he died young, not even his mother was able to feel a full level of pain. The atmosphere was filled with peace and comfort. This was a clear indication that he died “saved”.
2. We've yet to profile a poem of yours that included punctuation. Why do you choose to write without punctuation? What do you see as the benefits and drawbacks of this choice?
That is a big question. I believe that the reading of my poems is directed by line breaks and certain key words such as what, how, who, when etc. that give a tone to the poems. The breaks replace commas and full stops while the key words make sure that questions and other sentence forms are read in the right tone. The strange benefit of this style is the freedom that the words enjoy, a drawback may be the fact that this style does not obey the “rules” and may sometimes make it difficult for certain lines to be read properly.
3. Do you intend for your poems, primarily, to be read on the page, or to be performed?
Primarily, I only send my poems out for it to be read on the page so that any criticisms or observations will help carve my writing into excellence. However, a performance of any of them is a welcomed idea.
4. How important are outside editors, critics, etc. to the development of your writing?
Outside critics are the furnace, hammers and chisels that shape my writing towards an excellent standard. I believe that their various views from all angles give a summary of audiences’ thoughts about my writing. However, I always make sure that my poems in the end still carry the uniqueness I desire while preserving the message in its completeness.
5. It has been more than three since you were profiled on OGOV. What has happened in your life since then? In your writing life?
My life within the period had been filled with the demands of academics, personal growth, and entrepreneurial endeavours. I had shown little faithfulness towards poetry however, a few of my most cherished pieces were written within the period.
Contact Agbleze:
agblezes(at)yahoo.com
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20:02
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One Ghana, One Voice
Weep not
African child
Smile not
As you partake initiation into adulthood.
The old ladies will have a wrong perception
through their tirade.
They will lay a guilt trip on you.
Acquiesce.
Take this egg.
Eat!
Like the octogenarian with no teeth.
Tour this township
Like it is one of the tournament’s trophies won
With a bandana of clothes
Almost naked
The communities will see how matured you are.
The men will consider making you a spouse
The boys will have a good reason to lust.
Weep not
African child
Smile not
Womanhood has just arrived.
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20:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Martin Elorm Dogbo was born at Accra New Town, erstwhile Lagos Town, near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra, Ghana. He has been moving from one region to the other due to the peripatetic nature of his job. So for, he has worked in four regions in Ghana and he is hoping to go beyond that.
He completed a degree in Journalism from the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) in 2009. He then worked at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) in the Central Region as a part-timer from July 2008 to January 2009. He next worked with the National Media Commission (NMC) as a media researcher and monitoring officer.
With his poetry, he hopes to achieve change and also to give insight into real life situations, particularly in the Ghanaian environment.
Five Questions with Martin Elorm Dogbo:
1. Can you explain the Dipo ceremony for our readers not in the know? What inspired you to write about it?
The Dipo is a chain of ceremonies that mark the passage of girls into womanhood. It is practiced by the people of Krobo, in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The ceremony or ritual has been in practice from an eon and has not lost its popularity despite the plethora of destructive criticisms leveled against it. At the beginning of the Dipo, each girl enters a ritual house, doffs her clothing, and is dressed partly naked by her ritual mother. The morning after shaving their heads, the girls carry their calabashes to the river to bathe. The washing ceremony is a purification rite to cleanse the body and spirit. This is followed by a ritual bathing, after which the girls are fed a special meal made from yam and palm-oil sauce prepared by their mothers. The beads, a highly cherished jewel of the people of Krobo, are worn around their necks. At the end of the ceremony, the Krobo girls dance for the chief together with other royals, relatives, and, most importantly, prospective suitors who gather to admire the exhibition of feminine grandeur and beauty. This is followed by other activities. Despite the influence of the Christian church in Ghana the Krobo people consider the Dipo ceremony their most sacred and cherished ceremonial tradition.
I was inspired by the awareness of the drowning of our rich and beautiful Ghanaian culture.
2. Do you think of this poem as being written primarily for people already familiar with the dipo ceremony, or as an introduction to it for the uninformed?
Even though I see it as a combination of both, it is more as an introduction to the uninformed, and most importantly as it is axiomatic that Western culture is gradually eating up the Ghanaian local culture.
3. The simple refrain in the poem, "Weep not / African child / Smile not", is striking. Was it the first part of the poem to come to you, or did it come along later in the writing?
It was the first part of the poem. Well, it is for two reasons: first, with people normally considering laughter or smile as a paucity of seriousness, “Smile not" is a warning seeking to enforce seriousness as the ceremony goes on; “Weep not” is to convince the persona not to cry (or be sad) since Dipo is not a bad practice at all.
4. It's been almost two years since we last heard from you. What has kept you away, and how have you been doing in that time?
I know and I apologize sincerely for that. Journalism, my profession, has been one of the reasons. The other is I am trying to write political prose and poems. These entail careful observation and much time.
5. On an unrelated note, how have you been enjoying the World Cup so far? What do you think of Ghana's chances?
It has been a quite unputdownable to me because a lot of my predictions and analyses have come to pass. Ghana to me, is the best team in Africa, and I think it is the hope of Africa as well. Ghana has come too far to return with nothing.
Contact Martin Elorm:
eldusty911(at)gmail.com
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2:49
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One Ghana, One Voice
the kakalika[i] eats the calico
of old people with kaka[ii] and kookoo[iii]
and catastrophe catapults its trick
with man-versus-insect catalytic
cockroaches encroach our peace lurking
through abroach beer bottles
lying on bar floors by the drunken
listless to find their way home.
I see slimy grimy baby roaches
approaching dirty dishes with gusto
broaching our disgust when we find
them crouch near our open mouths
we reach for empty RAID cans cursing
ourselves for complacency
and our darkened rooms become the playgrounds
for rodents and Blattaria pests
sleep is shot by insects searching
through cupboards and kettles
no more silence as plastic cups turn
as a thousand critters roam
the room is filled with flying cockroaches
we smash them between recto and verso
but the night has made us all blind
we are victims in her blackouts
we beat ourselves in this confusion
roach-riddance is urgency
triggering mistakes as melee abounds
thanks to these cold-blooded insects
I guess the cockroach will inherit the earth
after the meek get fed up with being nice.
They run through the chamber and hall, coach and berth
indulging us all with creepy surprise
the kakalika eats the calico
of old people with kaka and kookoo
and catastrophe catapults its trick
with man-versus-insect catalytic
[i] The Ga word for ‘cockroach’
[ii] Twi word for toothache
[iii] Twi word for ‘a weak waist’, a sign of age and morbidity
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1:46
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Born in Ghana, Prince Mensah has twenty-five stage plays to his credit. Some of them have been acted at the Accra Arts Center and at several locations in Accra. His articles and stories have been published in the STEP magazine, P & P, Ghanadot.com and The Free Press. His poetry has been published in the Munyori Journal, UNESCO's Other Voices International Project, The Muse Literary Magazine and the Dublin Writer's Workshop.
Prince Mensah has published seventeen books of poetry. They are Memoirs of A Native Son, I Shall, I Will, I Can (Poetry Inspired by Barack Obama), Afrocentric, ecclesiastes, State of An Abstract Mind, The Griot Metropolitan, The Land of Broken Mirrors, Coronation, Enough is Enough, World War-Free, in praise of the calabash, Prophylaxis, Via Dolorosa, Tabula Rasa, Eclectic, Situational Hazard and Chronology.
Prince is a Consultant in Workplace Mediation, an HIV/AID Treatment Advocate and an Eligible Translator/Interpreter in Twi & Fante for the Judicial Consortium of 40 American States. He lives in the United States with his wife, Charisse.
Prince is the head of North American promotions for One Ghana, One Voice.
Five questions with Prince Mensah:
1. We all have a few entries in our own "kakalika diaries". Do you have any encounters with cockroaches that are particularly memorable to you?
Most people on earth have had encounters with cockroaches. I have not met a person yet who has a cockroach as a pet. They are pests. We hate them They are slimy, creepy and unwelcome in any decent home. As a child, what really freaked me out was the spectacle of flying cockroaches; that was always unpleasant. There is no particular incident that stands out; however, there were pieces of memory, here and there, that helped me in the construction of this poem.
2. This poem seems more interested in internal rhyme than your previous work. You state this clearly with the opening two words "cockroaches encroach" and carry on through the rest of the poem. Is this the style of your new poems, or something adopted for only this poem?
'Kakalika Diaries' was written, one evening, after I browsed through my personal experiences and decided to write about the unpleasant ones. The main objective was to realize order and meaning in things (or insects) we really do not want to think about. The other motive was to unearth human emotions, such as anger and humor, in our dealings with pests, such as the cockroach. Whether we like it or not, we have to share this world with these creatures. I guess the feeling is mutual, as animals don't seem to like us that much.
The internal rhyme was included to capture the sneakiness of the cockroach. You never find them in the open. They hate light. They love darkness but amidst the darkness, there is a method to their madness. This was a particular intent of this poem. As to style, I am nomadic. I love to explore and experiment.
3. In addition to your interest in using Ga and Twi words in your work, you also use technical terms and other pieces of "obscure" English (i.e. "blattaria"). What motivates you to do this? Are you aiming to expand the vocabulary of your readers? If so, are you concerned that readers might just stop reading instead of trying to figure out what the words mean?
The use of technical and obscure English is intentional, for three reasons. The first is to create a better level of understanding about this common insect. The second is to prompt the reader to research the words in order to reach a deeper meaning of the poem. The third is to explore language, not just to challenge the reader, but to do justice to the poem. Poetry is a genre where we try to make a lot of meaning out of few words; it makes it imperative to use 'loaded' words so that the reader can go back and do his/her research on what he/she just read. I think poetry should not only be for the right sounding sounds; it should be a place where people discover the uncommon in common things. In writing poetry, such as 'Kakalika Diaries', my intention is not to burden the reader - it is to engage him/her to read the poem over and over again until he/she reaches his/her own conclusions, based on his/her own realities. I am not really concerned about readers who might stop reading, because a reader of any kind of literature must possess, first of all, an inquiring attitude and a restless intellect. For our poetry to contend on the global scene, it must be unapologetic, authentic and thought-provoking. I come from that school of thought; that is why I mix languages because they are all spoken by one creature - man. There is a great truth in poetry being accessible, yet after being assessible, it has to be assertive in its own way.
4. It's been a while since we saw one of your poems accompanied by a YouTube video. Have you gone away from this practice? If so, why?
I have not done poetry video for a while because of several developments in my career, which have led me away from my beloved movie creating software. I promise my readers to get back into the mode very soon, because visualization is one of the communicative powers in our age. I think poetry, to sustain interest, must employ that medium.
EDITORIAL UPDATE: As you can see, Prince created a video for "Kakalika Diaries" after answering this question!
5. Can you give us an update on the status of Mensa Press?
Mensa Press' hands are really full this year: five outstanding anthologies, Foster Toppars's book of poetry and several collaborative projects. This will be a working summer because our editors are salivating over poems submitted by a host of splendid poets (many of whom have been featured on One Ghana, One Voice magazine) I can promise our loyal readers that what they are about to read in the following months would blow their minds. We all have One Ghana, One Voice magazine to thank for galvanizing us to take our literary destiny into our hands. The battle is not over but, rest assured, that the soldiers will not rest until victory is attained.
Contact Prince:
Email: pryncemensah(at)yahoo.com
Website: [www.freewebs.com]
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18:54
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One Ghana, One Voice
Daniela Elza's poem "
Savannah Rain, West Africa," which was originally published here at
OGOV last year, and was selected by readers as one of our
favourite poems of 2009, was recently also selected as a finalist for
Sundress Publication's
Best of the Net 2009! The full list of finalists is
here.
We're incredibly happy for Daniela, and appreciative to her for considering
OGOV as a home for her writing. We are equally grateful to all our other writers, including those whose poems we nominated for
Best of the Net 2009 alongside Daniela's. We like to think of Daniela's win as a team effort: the strength of the other submitted poems and of the work we are publishing from week-to-week helped propel Daniela's poem into consideration. Here is a full list of the nominees that we submitted for
Best of the Net 2009:
Dry Season in Eremon by Edith Faalong
Ananse’s Grave by Kae Sun
Savannah Rain, West Africa by Daniela Elza
The Train by Prince Mensah
Odomankoma’s Drummer by Kwadwo Kwarteng
If you haven't read these poems, or haven't read them in a while, they are well worth a look.
Every year, nominations for
Best of the Net will be selected by the editors from amongst all our published poems from that given year. Do you think you might have written the next "Best of the Net" poem?
Submit it to us today!
Congratulations, Daniela!
Note: Our normal weekly postings will resume this Saturday.
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3:32
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One Ghana, One Voice
Due to technical difficulties, the posting of this week's poem had been delayed. It should be up within the next 24 hours. Our apologies.
- The OGOV Team
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20:02
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One Ghana, One Voice
behind it all
our unmistakeable resilience
the abundance of hope
for we are no pessimists
the reality plain to see
africa bleeding profusely
fires of discord fanned
the beneficiaries in glee
robbed of childhood
playing fields bereft of children
high on lsd, heroin, mandrax...
raping, robbing, killing with impunity
the hidden hand at it
propping unpopular regimes
the ever widening chasms
bickering over foreign ideas
africa bleeding profusely
somewhere they drink the blood
the prophets long said it
the richest place, home to the poorest race
in somalia, sudan, ethiopia
everywhere the bloody feuding
the scramble for blood diamonds
everywhere death and destruction
beneath all this desolation
the undying hope sprouting
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20:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Jabulani Mzinyathi was born in 1965 in Ascot high density suburb, Gwelo, Rhodesia (now Gweru, Zimbabwe), to working class parents. He is a poet first and a writer in general. He is a qualified primary school teacher turned magistrate. He also holds a diploma in personnel management.
In 1997 he was awarded a diploma for excellence by the panel of judges of the Scottish international open poetry contest. He has had several poems and short stories published by magazines in Zimbabwe and abroad. He also used to write humour pieces for some newspapers in Zimbabwe. He has been a columnist for Moto magazine in Gweru, and wrote a legal column under the pen name ‘pro deo’. He was the vice chairman of the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe, Midlands branch and the chairman of the Zimbabwe Poetry Society.
He is still am writing. He has a blogspot; jabulanimzinyathi.blogspot.com. He writes poetry because it is how he feels he can better express himself and leave a legacy. All his work is organic in the sense that it is derived from his direct experiences. He draws a lot of inspiration from the events that happen daily around him.
Five Questions with Jabulani Mzinyathi:
1. Africa Day was this past Tuesday. Did you do anything to mark the occasion?
on africa day i composed yet another poem entitled "africa day introspection." it addressed the issue of repressive regimes on the continent and also the phenomenon of child soldiers. our children are wrenched from playgrounds and end up with minds befuddled by drugs and other intoxicants. they are taught to kill with impunity. we are robbed of the future in the senseless wars that are daily waged by greedy and corrupt rulers [not leaders]. at a personal level i also put messages on face book. i listened to reggae music and realised as i have always done that the link between the jamaican artists and the continent - africa has always been great. i urged people to listen to peter tosh who sang "i am not gonna give it up... i will be fighting 'til africa and africans are free." i listened to marley wail "africa unite." i proudly had my red, gold and green bracelets around my wrists.
2. If you care to expand on your poem, what feelings does Africa Day invoke in you?
africa day makes me have a deep desire to get back to leaders like abdel nasser and kwame nkrumah, that great ghanaian and fellow african. they gave us lots of lessons we may draw from. the continent largely is bereft of visionaries. this is a debatable point. i must salute the ghanaians though for their somewhat smooth transfer of power. i am not saying they are perfect but they have done commendably well!
3. Do you think all corners of Africa view Africa Day with the same regard? Do you think Zimbabweans may view the day differently than others?
africa day is not viewed the same everywhere on the continent. there are some of our brothers and sisters who have engaged in xenophobia in a shocking manner. they do not even view themselves as africans. how sad? there was not much hype in zimbabwe but i saw a pleasing level of awareness. the local media was awash with stories about africa day.
4. Yours is our second profile of a Zimbabwean poet in two weeks. What do you think of Mbizo Chirasha's account of the state of the country? The state of poetry in the country? Do you have any fresh observations of your own to add?
ah mbizo my compatriot is known to me at a personal level. he is an incisive social political commentator. i read his views and agree with him largely. the politicians should stop the senseless bickering and get on with the business of good governance and "bread and butter" issues (or is it "sadza issues," our staple diet). the power struggles do not seem to help the ordinary man on the streets.
about the state of poetry i can only say we are busy and are hopeful that as we come out of the economic morass we have been stuck in enterprising publishers will find it prudent to resurrect poetry. the genre has like other genres been badly trounced by the sad state of affairs. as society opens up and we espouse more tolerance for divergent views we may see the works getting published. do you hear me out there davy mungoshi, nhamo mhiripiri, memory chirere, chenjerai hove, hleko vuma, dillion banda and many others i know have been taking notes as we trudged through the difficult times starting around the late 1990s. the worst will soon be over!
5. Do you have any news or updates from your own writing life that you think our readers might be interested in?
i am working on several literary projects. i am working on numerous poems as well as a collection of short stories entitled "turning point" thanks to the encouragement of christopher mlalazi my compatriot and acclaimed writer. i am yet to do a collection of poems with emmanuel sigauke. we undertook to do it but we have been busy with other commitments.
i urge readers to check out jabulanimzinyathi.blogspot.com and do constructive criticism. i am not looking for praise singers. i will be writing still.
Contact Jabulani:
Email:jmzinyathi1(at)yahoo.co.uk
Website: [jabulanimzinyathi.blogspot.com]
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20:02
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One Ghana, One Voice
greasy propaganda apples for peasants
bourgeoisie for sweating corruption omelet
villagers for cassava and diet coke
streets for hip hop and toy guns
school uniform for phd studies and bible for my daughter
wreath for saint valentine
roses for saint paul
revolutions changed and revolutions unchanged
canister for fat breakfast
bullet for big supper
i am fasting the supper and breakfast
sun born with vaseline on its forehead
moonrise with cancer on its breasts
tender skin of stars split by ghetto politics
kindas blowing condoms with lung wind
elders blowing balloons with broken hearts
another revolution
another liberation
another slice of politics
another rumble of hunger
another for the priest.
sweat drops, raindrops, tear drops
raindrops, teardrops, sweat drops
the breath of my pen stink
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20:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Mbizo is the official poet in residence for the ISOLA International Conference of Oral Literature 2010 at the University of Nairobi. He is also the Guest poet at the 2010 Arts in Translation conference in Iceland. He was Africa's 100Best Books delegate at Swedish cultural book/cultural centres and the Goteborg Book Fair in 2003. Mbizo founded the Writers Caravan, a creative writing initiative in Zimbabwe. He is also the founder of an amateur poetry conference, a poetry festival and other projects.
He is a widely anthologized poet, published in more than 35 journals, magazines and anthologies around world.
Five Questions with Mbizo Chirasha:
1. The title of this poem suggests the interaction between page ("pen") and performance ("breath") poetry. Do you write your poems primarily for the page or to be performed aloud? Do you think a poem can succeed at both equally?
I believe poetry I write can be performed and read successfully, for I believe the impact on written work can affect readers the same way it does to listeners in a spoken word session.
2. If you write your poems to be performed, how do you feel about your poems being displayed in print, with no audio component? Do you think something is lost when your poems aren't heard as spoken from your voice?
I used to think this, when I was still young in this art/craft. Now because I have grown strongly in this industry, I am understanding the dynamics of the voice we get both in readership and listenership.
3. When you perform your poems, do you have them memorized, or do you read them from the page?
Most of my performances are memorized works 'cause the audience reads, so when you read in front of them, they think that you aren't be a performer, but a writer or a reader. Sometimes in commissioned events I will read, but I must say the greatest performer must perform his poetry by head.
4. You are one of our "poets on the ground" in Zimbabwe. What do you have to report on the current state of the country? Of the country's arts community?
The leadership must stop take chances with people. The unity goverment must bring proficiency and efficiency in the state of affairs. We need a leadership that respects nurses and teachers. One thing that I don't understand up to now is having seventy-six ministers and their deputies: for what?
While the country fails to raise money for power and water as well infrastructural needs, I have my own pan-Africanist views. But pan-Africanism mustn't be the support of the ideologies of those who bring countries from struggle. It must have a name tag of respecting people who are ruled and those who advocate for change. The local government has become corrupt with residential stands and hefty salaries while cities are bathing in sewer. I wonder where is change?
5. How have Zimbabwean artists been responding to the country's struggles?
A lot of things have been happening: discussions, poetry sessions like Poets for Human Rights, and book cafes have offered platforms for voices of freedom. Visual exhibitions are being curated that try to articulate the state of the nations. But some artists don't participate because they feel the impact, they do it 'cause somebody is sponsoring them, or they become voices of those who have agendas for resources and other political reasons.
While I agree that corruption brought us down, other political forces also played part in the fall of the country. Politicians must remember to leave pure legacies and those from outside who say they beliveve in human rights must not do things with double standards, but instead with a focused vision to build Zimbabwe. We as Zimbabweans will also help find the solution if we put hands together here in the first stage of the unity government. I trust it will work for the good for the people of this nation.
Contact Mbizo:
Email: mbizoc(at)yahoo.co.uk
Website: [www.mbizopoetry.blogspot.com]
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20:15
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One Ghana, One Voice
Once born was a child among many,
Innocent, free spirited, a humming bee
In his eyes the world was at peace,
in his mind there was an end to the sea
He lived on scanty amidst the many,
he fed on many when all had ceased.
He was conceived during those times,
the time when beasts lived like men
when the fleas pleas could be heard,
when savagery and bravery lied not
yet the civilised bonded with the savage,
and he was born of royal heritage.
Like the many tales among his kinsmen
His name was many among the many
The re-incarnated, the gift of the old folks
He was the pride of the father folk,
the women sung him names in dirges
yet they craved to taste his lineage.
To what he could do, there was no end
After all, he was the son of the sun gods
the wealthiest prince among the many
Of his might and splendour, measureless
Of his beauty and glory, priceless
Yet he lived a pauper amidst the many.
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20:10
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Kwadwo Oteng Owusu is the third born of four siblings. He grew up primarily in Kumasi and graduated from Prempeh College and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology with a B.Sc. Development Planning degree. Currently he is doing his national service in Mfantseman Municipal Assembly, Central Region and is attached to the World Vision Mfantseman ADP, Saltpond.
Five Questions with Kwadwo Oteng Owusu:
1. You use repetition, especially of the word "many", quite intentionally in this poem. What interests you in repetition as a poetic device?
My interest in repetition as poetic device stems from the fact that, it tends to keep the focus of a poem intact, literally, whilst allowing you to associate different meanings to the repetitive word in the different stanzas of the poem. It also has the power of keeping your readers focused on the reading, at least for the fun of it. The use of repetition in this poem (in the word "many") was to keep me focused on the comparison I was making between what is perceived and what is actual. That there were others apart from what was being mentioned.
2. Similarly, what draws you to use rhyme in the ways you do? What effect to you hope for it to have on your reader?
Rhyming adds sound to a poem. It adds life to the fabric of any poem. I intentionally made the effort to rhyme in this poem just to give it another dimension, especially on the backdrop of the extensive use of "repetition." I want my readers to enjoy reading the poem and not be bored whilst doing that.
3. You mentioned in your last interview that you think of poetry as an educational tool. What has poetry taught you over the years?
Poetry teaches a lot. This poem, for instance, teaches that it is not the presence of potentials that matter, but how one exploits them to better his lot that really counts, hence, the child in our dream is different from the child that is born to us. It teaches us that as a people, we should be up and making our dreams what we have conceived them to be. That is the lesson I learn from this poem, and that is how I approach any poem i read - to try and learn something from its lines and story.
4. Do you read your poetry aloud, either at readings or to friends? If so, how does this affect your writing?
I write my poems to be read out loud and I read them out to friends who I know appreciate poetry. It is this that sometimes guides me in the use of such poetic devises that give rhythm and sound. It makes you conscious of the audience and generates a self-awareness that propels you to be coherent in your thought process.
5. What's new in your writing or personal life that you think our readers might be interested in?
I think I will be writing poems for a long time. There a several half baked poems that I have to complete and when that is done, who knows, I may have them published in hard copy with a full commentary on them. At the moment, I am still taking life easy in my little, quiet coastal town in Ghana, hoping to finish National Service soon.
Contact Kwadwo:
okobenus(at)yahoo.com
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20:46
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One Ghana, One Voice
Looking at your young days
Funny memories flash back
I would have loved to be there
And feast my eyes on thy youthful grace
An apple eve, daddy was not wrong
To have taken a humble bite
A black beauty of contours and design
Who could make the poet words fall out of line
But now taking a second look at your face
Tells a different story of worry
Has time become the thief of your former self?
No! I stubbornly did it
My rebellious acts called for screams
Causing veins to stand up in vain
A gaze at your forehead furrows
Tells a story of worry that knew no apology
But your forgiveness came
Even when not sought
Your fallen breast registers my sleeplessness
Your humbled frame registers my restlessness
So who then say Time did brush away your beauty?
I did!
Because I was glued to you better than he was
Hence:
Take my humble praise
Sweet precious mama
“No mother no home”
“No woman no comfort”
You are a mother like no other
For you deserve an everlasting salute
That must walk over a hoot and a boot!
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20:33
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Adjei Agyei-Baah is a 32-year old Ghanaian living in Ghana. He holds a MBAe in Strategic Management and Business Consulting from KNUST School of Business, Ghana. He is an adjunct lecturer University College of Management Stidies (UCOMS), Kumasi.
Some of Adjei's poems have been published on numerous websites, including his personal blog, kwakubaa.blogspot.com. He accidentally discovered his talent of writing when, while undertaking research work on children’s rhymes, he was asked by his supervisor create some poems of his own poems. Adjei is married and blessed with a baby boy.
Five Questions with Adjei Agyei-Baah:
1. What do you plan on doing on Mother’s Day to celebrate?
I intend to give my mother a special treat at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Kumasi. Last year’s Mothers Day had been horrible and heart-rending. TV 3 had chosen my entry as a winner in a contest for their Mother's Day 2009 program: "Mother with a Purpose". Because of this she was invited to be interviewed on the show. The sad part of the story was that she came home with no prize and no interview granted her; a reason I think was best known to the organizers of the event. So I want take this opportunity to make amends.
2. Will you show this poem to your mother? If you did, what do you think her reaction would be?
I will definitely do that, but I will have to translate it into our local dialect for her to appreciate it better. I think she will definitely laugh and give me the biggest hug that I could ever dream of and say in her mind: “Nutty boy, you always find a way of paying for stubbornness; I thank God for bringing you into my life”.
3. What's your message to all the Moms out there other than your own on their special day?
They are the blessed centers of the universe... without them everything else ceases to exist! No mother, no home, no woman, no comfort. They deserve and everlasting salute that must walk over a hoot and a boot.
4. You're crafting yourself into OGOV's "occasional poet". What upcoming holidays do you hope to write about next?
I intend to write on Ghana’s Independence Day and also Pan-African Day which are too far way, at least to give room for others to get published too.
5. Are there any new things happening in your writing life, or in your life in general, that you think our readers might be interested in?
I am currently editing and rewriting my old works to get published by Author House, US.
Contact Adjei:
kwakubaa(at)yahoo.com
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20:02
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One Ghana, One Voice
My mother was born on the other side of the oceans
With such a pretty sheen she came into this world
A true goddess of beauty
My dad once visited the other side of the ocean
And went into the bosom of my mum
He didn’t leave till very early the next day
Then I was created as a result of this interaction of love
Which continually yearns in the heart of every man
I came into being and was given what is termed life
Do I and Don’t I
Do I really love the complications that this journey brings?
Life is often unfair to the righteous
And death makes it more complicated
I dread the death of a good man and every good companion
The unfairness of this life saddens my heart
I am an art of beauty in this life yet life's complications make me sad
Why must we love in life
When the knife of death poses as the biggest enemy?
My life and your life
The other lives on earth
An art of the magnificence of this universe
My heart saddens at the complication of this genre termed life
Do I want it as many more men fall victims to the unfairness of life?
Why give me this life, God?
Why make the righteous suffer in the midst of the wicked?
Tears run down my cheeks every time life’s complications come into mind
When will nature take away all the unfairness?
And when will nature take away death?
Life’s greatest enemy
My maternal grandpa is gone
My paternal grandma belongs to the other world
My hero Nkrumah has also passed on
Passed on to the world where the living do not exist
All confirmations of life’s injustices
We are all going to be victims of life’s injustices one day
Till the day when the universal sovereign stops this world
The world that lies in the hands of the wicked
And where the wicked ones rule and live
Whilst we all survive as we thrive to do his will
Life, what is your true meaning to mankind?
And when will your greatest enemy be conquered?
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20:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Julian is an alum of Presby Boys Secondary School, Legon. He holds a B.A. in Business Studies at the Kensington College of Business, London, a Diploma in Journalism at the Writers Bureau College of Journalism, Manchester, UK, Executive Diplomas in Strategic Management and Management, a Diploma in Management Studies and an Executive MBA at the Huddersfield University, UK.
He has worked in several management positions in the UK and Africa and wants to see Africans do a lot more for themselves rather than relying on the IMF and other donor agencies by developing their human capital. He speaks three languages with a rudimentary knowledge of German and has traveled extensively around the globe spreading his poetry messages and helping out with business solutions.
Julian is also the proud author of two bestsellers, namely Smile Africa and Recall, which are both available on amazon.com, bn.com, borders.com, and in major retail outlets around the globe.
Julian is a co-founder of One Ghana, One Voice.
Five Questions with Julian Adomako-Gyimah:
1. This is the second of your poems that we've published that has dealt with mothers and/or motherhood. Is this mere coincidence, or is there something about your mother, mothers in general, or the idea of motherhood, that you are particularly drawn to?
For me, life begins with motherhood and thus every good mother is a royal who is hailed anytime I get the chance to do so. My mother is the complete epitome of love and dedication as she has done so much for me from the day I was born, breastfeeding me all the way till today... We are constantly viewed as babies by our mothers so mother in the world have something special that we need to constantly talk about. I therefore appeal to all men to treat good women gingerly, and with respect.
2. Do you read your poetry aloud, either at readings or to friends? If so, how does this affect your writing?
I often read my poetry to friends and sometimes at readings as I intend to come up with dub poetry in the near future where my poems would be backed my instrumentals and put on CD for sale like one of the greatest poets in the world today, Mutabaruka, does. It certainly affects my poetry as I often accommodate comments both negative and positive and change style accordingly.
3. What, generally speaking, is the initial spark for a poem for you? Do you start with a line, an image, a theme?
For me the spark is a combination of image and theme as makes the writing of the lines so easy. Great Minds as we know always visualise.
4. When in the early writing of a poem do you know that it is worth keeping and working on more?
After writing the first 3 lines, I know whether it is worth going on or time to halt the process.
5. Anything new and exciting happening in your writing life?
I am still working on my first novel "the graveyard", am still doing my management consulting, and am venturing into entertainment, too. In December I travelled to Equatorial Guinea, where I witnessed the inauguration of the President and also organised some musicians from here to perform there. It was an exciting experience. It is always good to dream big as the oceans themselves! There is so much happening but I cannot obviously put all of it into the public domain at this time.
Contact Julian:
jlnadom(at)gmail.com
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20:02
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One Ghana, One Voice
It is not for the riches nor the many stitches we see
Neither is it for the fashions nor great mansions we desire
And the residual abundances of the surplus redundancies
It is not for the tricks of the politician
Nor the ancient favouritism of man’s nepotism
But the very fate of man’s innate isms and schisms
It is not as good as the potion of the bitter bile
Nor the worrisome nagging song of the nocturnal bat
But the old legacies left by the scars of racism and ethnicism
It is not the criticism against the present government
Nor the count of vices against the previous’ resentment
But the very treachery against the dignity of humanity
Oh yes! I say it is for none of those we see in the media
Nor the countless lies and crying agenda of propaganda
But the sad defect of disrespect of the societal intellect
It is not of the many morn traffics we hurdle through
Nor our several years of boil in toil upon the desert soil
But a sheer ear to the people’s clarion call for the uprising
It is not for the rattle of rifle in search for power and title
Nor of the Western colonialism and stern imperialism
But a mere squint to the people for their deprived dues
While we go behind a shutter without water
Living in the ghetto with the wailing motto
But never getting heard, seen, nor touched
It is the lies we seek to uncover
The dignity denied to common humanity
And a dream to someday be remembered as numbered
But! Not for fame nor the very same game
But as a desperate young African wanting to be heard
And given the recognition as a royal son of Mama Africa
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20:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Appiah Grant is a Poet Laboratory Scientist. He studied General Science in the Labone Senior High School and further pursued a course in Science Laboratory Technology at the Trans Africa University College, Accra. He also worked with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research under the auspices of the Environmental Chemistry Department as well as the Lapaz Community Hospital both on internship. He currently works with a Medical Centre in the Greater Accra Region as a Laboratory Scientist where because of a great heart he has for science and medical research.
He is a member of the Talk Party of the famous Nubuke Foundaton, East Legon where poetry is hoisted high each forthnight. He admires poetry as an art and also believes the writer’s ink upon the scroll is much powerful than the fighter’s fiery two edged sword on the field. He wishes to inspire people with his work before finally they expire.
Five Questions with Appiah Grant:
1. How long have you been writing poetry?
As interesting as it may seem, I can remember putting meaningful words together in my early childhood days while I still learnt reading and writing with the popular “Writing Book” at about age eight. Nevertheless, poetry emerged as one of my favourite spots in my writing career as far back as 2004 while I was still occupied with my hectic science courses.
2. Who are your favorite poets? Which poets have most influenced and informed your work?
Standing numb like a bewitched lamb was how I felt when I first heard of a poetry rendition by Prof. Atukwei Okai, President of the Pan African Writers Association. I have since admired him as an icon in the world of poetry while the Noble Laureate Wole Soyinka, first black African to win the Noble Prize in Literature is also a great poet that I have learned from. Also, growing up and getting to meet and share the stage with contemporary young poets like Master Nii Lantey and the renowned “Sir Black,” one cannot but be proud of these versatile sons of Mama Africa.
I would say Prof. Atukwei Okai has had some level of influence on my works. A typical example was a work I was inspired to do as a result of the veteran’s piece titled “The Rosetta Stone”. “A While Along the Nile” therefore became a product of the inspiration I acquired and had to search deep into Africa’s geographical archives in order to be able to meet the desired content. I am therefore glad to say that it has recently been selected among many others for publication in an upcoming poetry book of Anthology called “Vision of the Motherland” by the MensaPress.
3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?
I have an innate belief that all men are equally capable and therefore when positioned in the right frames could excel past their assumed limits, hence it is a burning dream of mine to give people the inspiration they require to get there while leading them with the lights of education through the beloved art of poetry.
4. If you could improve or change one thing about the Ghanaian poetry scene, what would it be and why?
The least I could ever have done to improve the Ghanaian poetry scene is to stand out of the way of the ingenious creative Ghanaian poets. As said by John W. Gardner: “When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps someday we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light.”
I therefore strongly believe that depriving the potential writer the medium to communicate his piece is as good as standing in the light of the Ghanaian poet who is the centre of focus in the Ghanaian poetry scene. Hence, I would want to create early writing skill development programs in basic schools.
5. Your background is in the sciences. Do you find that science and poetry are two distinctly different parts of your life, or do they interact. If so, in what ways?
I would say studying science was a thing I dared doing and couldn’t have been a happy man if I hadn't pursued that noble dream. But as to poetry, it’s been part of me and I passionately grew to love it more. I write most of my pieces while in the lab but as to their interaction, they seem to me very diverse fields apart from the fact that I converge most of my scientific research works also into “writing”, but this is in the form of articles (some of which are published by Health Digest News, an online media).
Contact Appiah:
artlits(at)gmail.com
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20:02
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One Ghana, One Voice
On the fertile footpath
to the weedy farm
he fell…
(Sun and Moon at a twilight reunion)
…and died not
…and the conceived son
from the drunk communion
was not a toad-cow…
The mirror
reflects the contents of the mind…
The soul
harbours the deeds of the body…
The crab
surely begets a crab
You sow what you reaped
the farming season before…
Then he saw no heavens
…but a vast emptiness
He felt his feet suspend in space:
the Lotus-Eater cum Palm-Wine Gulper
He sang songs of lamentations
beneath the palm-wine seller’s shed
He tossed
turned
…tossed
Balanced himself
Fell
Broke his neck
His son has a bottle in his back pocket
A stoic man to succeed his father
…and he has his father’s Drunk Chromosomes
He is his father
moulted into prime youthfulness
to continue plying his trade
To be the gods’ concrete example of advice.
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20:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Nana Fredua-Agyeman is a Ghanaian poet who has been writing poetry for the past decade. Some of his poems have been published in Ghana Today International, Africa Resource (at www.africaresource.com and www.africaknowledgeproject.org) and the upcoming Ghana Poetry Project. He has a prepared manuscript titled ‘BLACK PATHOLOGY’, which he hopes to get published one day. In 2006 he discovered Haiku and have had some of his Haiku been published in America, Ireland, Japan etc in magazines such as Frogpond, Acorn, and The Heron’s Nest and at many e-zines such as SimplyHaiku and Shamrock.
Five Questions with Nana Fredua-Agyeman:
1. When you write, what is the primary audience you consider yourself to be writing for? Yourself? Your friends? Ghanaians? A global audience?
I mostly do not write for myself and even when I address myself in my poems I do so in the plural (even if I use the word ‘I’) signifying humanity in general. Hence, I would say I write for a global audience though sometimes I try to be a Ghanaian.
2. You mentioned in your last interview how important it is to you to perform your poems. Do you get many opportunities to perform your work in public? If so, in what venues?
This is an interesting question. I wish I could perform my poems the way I want them to be performed. I would love to but at the moment I have not and there are certain inward inhibitions that have prevented me from this, but things would change soon. Presently, I read to an audience and my main audience had been the members of the Ehalakasa Poetry Talk Party. This Poetry Club is a vibrant one based in Accra and we meet once every fortnight on Sunday at the Nubuke Foundation, an art gallery building by one of Ghana’s most prominent artists Kofi Sertodji. We hope to define the Ghanaian poetry scene.
3. If you could change one thing to improve the poetry scene in Ghana, what would it be?
Lack of, or poor, exposure. We have a lot of talents, some very good, others not so good. But what is lacking is the exposure of these works to a larger population. It is when people read and criticize one’s work that one begins to appreciate the impact of one’s work and then improve upon it. Most of the time poetry in Ghana has been from poet to poet. The publishing industry is not so keen in publishing poetry, hence we have to rely on people and presses like Mensa Press, Ghana Poetry Project and other websites for us to be heard. Yet aren’t poems meant to address issues and change circumstances? If this is to be achieved we would need to reach out to a larger audience and this would require bold steps by publishers.
4. You have noted in the past your interest in Haiku. What is it about the Haiku form that interests you?
Haiku is a Japanese poetry that developed many years ago and entered English not so long ago. It has two parts: a phrase part and a fragment part, and is composed of three lines. It is concise and devoid of any personal feelings, that is the experts say ‘show it, don’t say it’. One dimension of this poem is that it juxtaposes two things that are seemingly unrelated to make a powerful statement. Again, it shouldn’t be more than 17 syllables; however, some have argued that in English it should be about 12 or 13 syllables. This small introduction shows you that Haiku, being the smallest of all poetry forms, has the largest number of rules. And it is the ability to write in this form that brings fulfillment to one’s life especially if it is accepted by the masters. It also brings order to one’s life. The following piece of mine was published in The Mainichi Daily News of Japan on March 7, 2009:
harmattan night
a beggar's breath
disperses the crowd
5. It's been a year since we last heard from you. What has happened in your writing life in that time?
I have not been prolific over the past year, though I have presented my poems to an audience more. It was last year that I started reading my works to an audience. It is uplifting to when after you have read to an audience someone would approach you and tell you how wonderful that piece was, and say this genuinely. I have also worked on my manuscript and have submitted my works to other publishers and journals such as the Ghana Poetry Project, Mensa Press and many others.
Contact Nana:
freduagyeman(at)yahoo.com
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8:02
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One Ghana, One Voice
The year is withering: the wind
Blows down the leaves;
Men stand under eaves
And overhead the secrets
Of the cold dry wind,
Of the half-bare trees
The grasses are tall and tinted,
Straw gold hues of dryness,
And the contradicting awryness
Of the dusty roads a-scatter
With the peals of colourful leaves,
With ghosts of the dreaming year.
And soon, soon the fires,
The fires will begin to burn,
The hawk will flutter and turn
On its wings and swoop for the mouse,
The dogs will run for the hare,
The hare for its little life.
"The Dry Season" is the sixth, and final, of our series of poems on the
Harmattan . The fun isn't over yet, though! Due to the popularity of the series, new poems about the Harmattan will appear sporadically throughout the remainder of 2010, and will be collected
here.
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20:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
Kwesi Brew was one of the finest Ghanaian poets of his generation. He left a permanent mark on the landscape of Ghanaian poetry, and on the country itself - it is sometimes suggested that "
The Sea Eats Our Lands" played a role in motivating the government to construct Keta's sea-defense system. He died in 2007, at the age of 79.
In 2008 we concluded our
Keta Series with Brew's "The Sea Eats Our Lands". It seemed only fitting to conclude our
Harmattan Series with another Brew classic.
From Brew's biography in the
Contemporary Africa Database:
Born of a Fante family in central Ghana, Kwesi Brew was brought up after the death of his parents by a British guardian who introduced him to books. After his early education in Ghana, Brew was among the first BA graduates from the University College of the Gold Coast in 1951. Later he served both colonial and independent governments in district commissions, and after independence in diplomatic posts in Europe.
While still a student, Brew participated in college literary activities and experimented with prose, poetry, and drama; after graduation he won a British Council poetry competition in Accra, and his poems appeared in the Ghanaian literary journal Okyeame as well as several important African anthologies. Shadows of Laughter (1968), a collection of his best early poems, reveals a thematic interest unusual for an African poet: the value of the individual compared with that of society as a whole. In poems such as 'The Executioner's Dream', which views with something like horror some of the rituals of traditional African life, he suggests that society, in an attempt to purge itself of the ills of life, robs the individual of dignity. African Panorama and Other Poems (1981) draws upon the sights and sounds of rural and urban Africa. In his collection Return of No Return (1995), he pays tribute to the American writer Maya Angelou and to Ghanaians who may have helped reshape his Eurocentric views into Afrocentric ones.
From Brew's obituary in
The Guardian:
Kwesi Brew, who has died aged 79, was a Ghanaian public servant and businessman, and one of that talented generation who came to maturity during Ghana's independence 50 years ago.
Born of a Fante family which played a distinguished part in his country's history, he spent part of his youth under the guardianship of a British education officer, KJ Dickens, to whom, he used to say, he "owed everything". He was one of the first generation of undergraduates at the University College of the Gold Coast, where he read English and became known for his acting talents.
On graduation, Brew was recruited into the administrative service - part of the Africanisation programme to replace the British colonial officers - and was successively assistant district commissioner and then district commissioner, mainly working in the Kete Krachi area. He had to make his way among people who were not used to seeing a fellow African in such a post, but was soon warmly welcomed for his affability and lack of pomposity. Among the challenges he had to face was the imminence of the giant Volta Dam, which was to flood some of the Krachi lands.
Brew was recruited to the early Ghanaian diplomatic service and worked in the UK, France, Germany, India and the USSR, before serving as ambassador in Mexico, Lebanon and Senegal.
Later, out of sympathy with the politicians of the time, he left public service and went into business, first joining his younger brother Atu and working as resident director of the Takoradi Flour Mills from 1975-81. He then developed his own company, the Golden Spoon Flour Mills, based in Tema.
Kwesi Brew was in the tradition of writer-diplomats, producing elegant and elegiac verse. His only internationally published collection was The Shadows of Laughter (1968), but he wrote a compassionate poem on the downfall of Kwame Nkrumah. He is survived by his second wife and three daughters.
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20:02
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One Ghana, One Voice
Three-syllable-wind
Disinherited of moisture,
Bespoke and befitting
For the dispossessed,
Dear spirit-child-of-sand!
Who was it carved up the world’s winds,
Assigned you to me, as if to inject my parts,
With ampoules of your absent wetness?
Who was it bequeathed you this loom,
To weave a million ballads of dryness?
Some deficiency must bend your needle
Northeast; where, knuckled into the year’s
Headwinds, gargoyles greet your passing.
Great-great-godfather-of-the-sahel, yours,
Is a problem with rickets.
Long ago astrologers of meteorology,
Foretold the coming of a Sand Messiah,
Downwind of the wind gradient,
A desert dervish, come to tap
Dance with the wind.
And for this I waited; watching
The dandruff moult in the sun-brushed
Twigs of women’s braids.
I bore witness, as you, genuflecting,
Ripped humidity from its hinge.
And what did I gain but a squint,
Sat squat on the trig point of my vision?
Still, even devoid of moisture, you carry
Cadences of water in your double helix.
Or dare I say helices? And dare I say,
One day, just like that, at the break
Of the libationer's prayer
Whatever phlegm of water you gorged;
Would rise, to reign, then fall,
As nayabinghi rain:
De dum.
De dum.
De dum.
De dum.
De dum.
So sleep well. You, on your vowelled
Pillows. I too, shall snore well.
A parting note:
If we should meet in the damp dew, you’ll know,
By the way my skin crackles with drought-static.
"Wrickken" is the fifth of our series of poems on the
Harmattan. New entries will be posted each week, and collected
here.
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20:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
L. S. Mensah was born and raised in Accra, and has been living in the UK for the past few years. Recently her work has appeared in the annual Barnet Poetry Anthology, Akwantuo.org and Sentinel Poetry’s Champion Poems.
Five Questions with L. S. Mensah:
1. As a child, what was your reaction to the coming of the Harmattan? Has that changed now that you are an adult?
With a sense of dread really. One could sense its approach as the air becomes drier. I think the economic situation also had a lot to do with it, since the price of shea butter suddenly skyrockets. Suddenly shea butter sellers become the common enemy, and we're allowed to moan. As an adult, I look at it as just another weather phenomenon.
2. Living outside of Ghana now, do you miss the Harmattan season at all? And how does it compare to winter in the UK?
I do miss it around this time of year since it's at its height between December and February, which roughly coincides with Winter. In Ga the word for the Harmattan 'Aharabata' is the same as that for the month of January.
It is important not to over fetishize or romanticize it since it causes real discomfort. Some people's skins do really crack, especially around the heel, and bleeding lips are common, not to mention those with asthma and other breathing problems. There is even scientific evidence to suggest it leads to an increase in cerebrospinal meningitis (CSM) across the sub region. In Mali, CSM is known locally as 'the wind illness'. This being Africa a few hundred children die from this disease around this time.
3. In the past, did the Harmattan affect your writing? Would you write less or more during the Harmattan season? Would the themes or tones of your poems change?
I wouldn't say it affected my writing very much; I suppose its presence enabled me to be philosophical about it. I think I have a few poems on the Harmattan, and I'm beginning to look at them as a sequence.
4. Your attention to detail, and to using the right words in the right places, is a great lesson to new Ghanaian writers of how a good poet is a craftsman (or craftswoman!). A question about craft then: when you are choosing your words for such lovely lines as "To weave a million ballads of dryness" and "You, on your vowelled / Pillows" how much of your concern is to literal meaning, how much to image, and how much to sound? What balance are you trying to strike?
Thanks a million for the compliment!
With this poem I started with the literal meaning, from the dictionary definition (and that's a possible way into a poem). You see the word 'Wrickken', is itself an old English word for rickets. 'Harmattan' the dictionary says, is of Akan origin, and dates back to around the 17th century. It is possible the word was absorbed into English, not long after the Europeans became heavily involved in trade with Africans. For me then, the poem draws on metaphors of deformity and timelessness.
The detail comes with the rewrites, when I start to reshape my material. I arrived at the line “To weave a million ballads of dryness” through a moment of serendipity really. I'd heard Marina Lewycka ("A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian"), on the radio, refer to the success rate for new writers as 'a ballad of failure' and then took it from there. For me, that line functions as a crutch. Since I tend to write (overly) long poems, I often look for a phrase or a line which can hold the poem up in places (sort of like Atlas), and allow my reader to pause for breathe, and then continue. I trust my reader to, at some other time, return and investigate the line, and by extension the whole poem again.
As for the phrase "You, on your vowelled / Pillows" it was an attempt to tease out a metalinguistic strain and tease out other meanings from that, but went no further with that. At some point one has to pull back and allow the reader to do the rest. By the time one has made decisions about where to break the line, which point of view to adopt, imagery, metaphor, assonance etc. the poem would have settled and found its own internal balance.
5. How many revisions did this poem go through before its present state? Is that number average, high or low for you?
This must be about the 9th or 10th revision, which is average really. I'm a bit finicky and as soon as I tell myself I'm done with a poem, I go back and start making changes to it. The way I approach it is to copy and paste the last draft, save it with the date, or write by hand in a notebook, also dated. That takes a little more time, but helps me think as I write. The danger with the rewrite is that it could bleed the poem of all vitality. But this way I can go back anytime if I lose my way.
I'll end with what William Herbert says in the essay 'Creative Space':
"Revision is the point at which you stop talking to yourself and start relating to your audience. Until you revise, you are just hanging around in creative space. Revision is the means by which you manoeuvre.
This is the pencil-thin line that a writer must turn into a thoroughfare: you journey into the hitherto unimagined for no other reason than you want to, and you must bring the reader along because you've made them think that they want to as well."
Contact L. S.:
nomadafricanus(at)yahoo.co.uk
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20:55
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One Ghana, One Voice
Tell the winds of the south
To blow up north
To replace the winds of the desert
For the hot dry winds have drunk
The waters of my fields
Tell the heroes and warriors of the west
To come to the east
To save my children
Who are drowned by the greed of my first borns
Tell they who take from my pouch
That my children need to sleep on a couch
For their backs have ached for long
For years have they tilled the land
And yet bare on the floor they sleep
Tell those wise sons and daughters of mine
That I do miss them; and I do lay for them a wreathe
To those returning send message
That the old mother is dying from rot
And now to those who are here
Let the winds be still
And peace inundate our barrels
I see in the hourglass distant good tidings
Booming and waiting to be tapped
When my coast is cleared of debris.
"Bleeding Call" is the fourth of our series of poems on the
Harmattan. New entries will be posted each week, and collected
here.
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20:51
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Nana Agyemang Ofosu, born on February 3rd, 1985 in Kumasi, Ghana, is a young poet. He holds a degree in civil engineering from Kwame Nkrumah University of science and technology and is currently honoring his national service at the Department of Urban Roads, Kumasi. As a student of science, he accidentally discovered his interest in poetry when he made a bad comment about a poetry piece of his younger brother. He is a member of an open mic poetry team in Kumasi and also a founding member of Unified Talents, the organizers of Open Mic Poetry.
Five Questions with Nana Agyemang Ofosu:
1. The Harmattan was brief this year. How did you feel about this?
The harmattan this year was unfriendly because it did not last long. It only gave me the impression that nature has changed. I now know that the climate change has hit my country and who ever is involved in such an act to destroy nature should be called to order.
2. When you were a child, how did you feel about the Harmattan? Have those feelings changed as you've aged?
As a young boy the harmattan only bathed me in white pale skin as I played in the sand. The Harmattan made it hard to breathe as we approached December and journeyed through to January to February. My early years as a child saw the beauty of the Harmattan when the climax was a beautiful windstorm gathering everything it found. The Harmattan season was a delight since it introduced a whole experience of life i had to adjust to.
But now there is a sudden change; the season of Harmattan has been shortened with no extraordinary effects. What is to come due to this change is only left to God.
3. In the past, has the Harmattan affected your writing? Have you written less or more during the Harmattan season? Have the themes or tones of your poems changed?
Though I have not specifically written something on Harmattan, I have made an effort to relate some of the things I write to it. I am not aware of the times when I write more often. How I write depends on how I feel about a situation and my emotions.
4. The title of this poem is an interesting one. Could you talk about it a bit?
Well, the title is about a mother who is calling her sons and those who can offer help to her in her difficult times. Clearly stated in the opening opening stanza, a call has been made to the winds of the south to replace that of the north and clearly that is the Harmattan which comes hard to us making the air too dry to breathe. The coming of the south winds brings hope and good tidings.
5. Is there anything new going on in your life/writing that you'd like to share with our readers?
Not much to share with readers. The only truth I want to share is the truth about God.
Contact Nana:
bunitslove(at)yahoo.com, unifiedtalents(at)hotmail.com
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3:18
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One Ghana, One Voice
Cracked lips
Not good for a kiss
Split heels
Not good for the sheets
Dry skin
Not good for man
Static Hair
Not good for the comb
Dry white dust
Not good for the houseproud
Icy nostrils
Very good for shea butter
A hot bowl of light soup
Just right for the insides
Harmattan! Na wa ooooh
"Harmattan don come again ooooooh" is the third of our series of poems on the
Harmattan. New entries will be posted each week, and collected
here.
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3:09
»
One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Born in Manchester, England in 1956, Mariska attended Holy Child Secondary School in Cape Coast and St. Mary's Secondary School, Mamprobi, Accra. She then returned to the UK and attended Beresford College of English and Commerce, Margate, Kent and later Harrow College of Further Education, Harrow, Middlesex. She has a PhD in Life.
She has two sons, Niinoi and Kwame. She is a motivational speaker, poet, writer, beautician, fire walker and lover of jazz, blues, reggae and old time highlife.
Five Questions with Mariska Taylor-Darko:
1. Your wish came true this year and the Harmattan did not come! How do you feel about this?
I missed the Harmattan. I was looking forward to the cool weather after the heat and I think we had one day where it threatened after some heavy rains and we said, "It's coming oooooo." Alas it never happened and it made me realize that climate change was really affecting us.
2. When you were a child, did you have similar feelings about the Harmattan, or have your feelings changed as you've aged?
When I was a child I didn't like it as much as I do now. I hated having shea butter or cocoa butter smeared over me and I had nosebleeds when the dryness came.
3. This is a very playful poem. Is there something about the Harmattan that draws that playfulness out of you?
The sight of people in Ghana, a warm place with an average of 35 degrees, wearing thick winter jackets and cardigans with ashy white lips always made me smile. I called it "Ghanaian Winter." Just the change in people's mannerisms and the Fan Ice sellers trying to convince you that its not harmful to eat frozen yoghurt while the biting wind was going through your bones!
4. What drew you to writing this poem in short-lined couplets? It seems to be a popular style these days amongst Ghanaian writers.
I wrote in short-lined couplet because that is how it came to me.
5. Is there anything new going on in your life/writing that you'd like to share with our readers?
Still looking for a reasonable priced publisher for my three completed books.
Contact Mariska:
Email: mariska.taylor(at)gmail.com
Alternate Email: arabataylord(at)yahoo.co.uk
Websites: African Woman's Poetry, Mariska's MySpace Page
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17:58
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One Ghana, One Voice
the harmattan (d r y and c o l d) came in
couplets— fine unrimed red d us t
no matter how tightweshutthewindows
you cannot keep it out
b l u r r e d the trees the ho us es
the past— its long fluorescent lights
thin apparition— the desert came in
sifted down through mosquito nets
) t.here is no without ) no within the Sahara
breathing as if it w e r e memory (s l o w
and d i f f i c u l t) arriving on the north east winds
sinking even through the fabric of my d reams
old dust made new on our living sur f a c e s
in the morning the black table top turned canvas
where my dad left us secret m e s s a g e s
where my sister and I awoke to the wor(l)d
drew and rhymed with child fingertips
before my mom shined it clean for breakfast
"old dust made new" is the second of our series of poems on the
Harmattan. New entries will be posted each week, and collected
here.
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17:52
»
One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Daniela Bouneva Elza has lived on three continents and crossed numerous geographic and cultural borders. Writing has been a faithful companion no matter what country or language she found herself in. To date she has released more than 120 poems into the world. She just completed her full length poetry manuscript and is also working toward the completion of her doctorate in Philosophy of Education. She lives with her family in Vancouver and blogs at [strangeplaces.livingcode.org]
Five Questions with Daniela Elza:
1. What great images you conjure up in "old dust made new"! More generally, though, how did you receive the harmattan each year in Northern Nigeria? With excitement? Relief? Frustration?
It was part of life. People wore hats and scarves in the early mornings. I wore a coat over my short sleeve uniform on the way to school. I was curious about how the haze made the familiar less familiar, the strange halo around the moon at night. The Harmattan was mostly a mystery to me. How it would steal into the house. Every morning a new presence, one that arrived from far away. The smell of the dust was most memorable. I clearly remember having difficulty breathing, not being able to go to sleep. It was so strong. My mom made me and my sister little gauze masks that she dampened and put on us at bed time. There was an ointment called Robb that I would rub on my temples, forehead, even under my nose, and the smell of eucalyptus and camphor helped. My favourite part in Rob's harmattan poem "Under the Harmattan Sky" was where he said we "write no poems." Interesting. Poems for me are very closely related to breath, so that sense came through for me. Looking back though my childhood lens, "mystery" is what best describes the Harmattan for me. Now even more so when on last week’s poem one of the readers mentioned the Harmattan did not come this year.
2. Your poems use space very intentionally. The size of the space between each word, and each letter of each word, seems very intentioned. What drew you to writing in this way? Did you have any other writers as points of inspiration in developing this style?
The words in my poems started to pull apart years ago. It was like coming to a place and feeling at home. I recognized it as my form. It has helped me address rubs and struggles with language and how we are in language. How we inhabit it. The form became an outward expression of this journey. It spoke to me, I learned from it. These spaces are breath, are missing memories, are blanks in our knowledge. They are reminders that our world is not seamless and ordered. There are silences we cannot ignore. I can go further: my order is not your order. We also get lazy and complacent with habitual arrangements of words. A word apart from others can take you on its own journey at the same time as it is part of the community of other word.
An important aspect of the spaces is inviting the reader to come in, take part in this co-creation. As readers, we have a tremendous responsibility reading and interpreting another’s words.
Language is like a net with which we try to catch the slippery fish of experience. It is the fish I am after. Yet, language is seductive. We can end up just playing with the net, be mesmerized by it. So this form for me always reminds me of the permeable membrane that exists between word and world.
I am inspired by people who take risks with language, test its limits and what it can achieve. I am humbled by the fact that no matter how hard we try we cannot put it all in the words. I am curious where the breaking point is. The fine line between the discomfort of chaos and the comfort of order. Or, perhaps for some, it is the other way around: the comfort of chaos and the discomfort of order.
3. These aforementioned spaces in words seem to function in two ways: they enact the words (i.e. "s l   o   w") and they create or isolate new words (i.e. the "us" in "d   us   t" and "ho   us   es"). Then there are some words that are subtly stretched for reasons that are less clear (i.e. "w e r e"). What leads you to playing with the spacing of particular words and not others? Do you feel it intuitively or do you think/map it out very cognitively?
The next logical step was the letters pulling apart. For different reasons. Like in "slow" it is the pace, or it could be for emphasis, or to invite the eye to linger with letter combinations. My latest exploration is highlighting words within words. For instance, in houses and dust, what struck me was that they contain us. We also get blurred by the dust. I see it as a way of adding an extra layer of images/ideas, subtexts, meta-content. I could easily be in danger of overdoing it. But, hey, if I do not overdo it, how else will I know I have gone too far? In the case of "w e r e": I saw we’re in it. And wondered if the reader will see "we’re memory" at the same time as "dust" and "desert" being memory. For me this poem is very much about memory, haunting us like the dust. How it renews itself, and us. Or, perhaps, "w e r e" is one instance of pushing too far. This is a new poem. I have to be patient, trust the balance will be established over time. I hope in each poem the technique responds to the content and continues to be an exploration, instead of a set form or path.
We spend so much time arguing around and about words. So many battles today are fought on the level of words (political, academic, ideological, religious). Yet, the words only fragment something whole (a thought/feeling) that is trying to come through. So I fragment the words. Meaning is in the words, but also not in them. Are we in control of the words or are they in control of us? Language is a slippery slope and can be treacherous. At the same time it can present us with many gifts.
4. Both of your poems featured thus far on OGOV have been written in couplets. Is this a general style of yours, a particular style you prefer for your African poems, or merely a coincidence?
They both took that shape, but may not have. This one was more premeditated than "Savannah Rain, West Africa" since it begins with the cold and the dust coming in couplets. That set the tone for me. This also goes back to the previous question: of how much is intuitive and how much is planned. Can we separate the two? I like to premeditate some. Yet, once the poem is loose on the page I am also prepared to flow with it, see where it leads. Gaston Bachelard in his book The Poetics of Reverie says: “The word lives syllable by syllable in danger of internal reveries.” If I cannot learn something from writing a poem, I am not interested in writing it. Perhaps an analogy might be: the teacher who knows when to abandon the lesson plan and follow the opportunity that a classroom serendipitously presents her. It is a fine balance between structure and flow. I am happy to embrace that in my practice. Some serendipity may grab my attention and then I can work that in the structure.
Now, for the reader the premeditated might appear coincidental. What was coincidental may be so seamless and graceful that it appears premeditated. For instance, the lack of punctuation was premeditated. I imagined how in the haze such little signposts will disappear first. However, if I had not said this you can come up with your own explanation/s (and you will) irrespective of what I intended, or did not intend. We are just that kind of creature. And that could lead to new serendipities and creations.
If I planned everything out before hand I am unlikely to venture into unknown territory. The sense of play and discovery is lost. And there is so much negotiation to do between word and world, and it could be done in an infinite number of ways. To quote Bachelard again: “What a lot of minor conflicts we must resolve upon returning from vagabond reverie to reasonable vocabulary!” In the complex laboratory of reverie and writing it is difficult to distinguish all these aspects.
For me writing is organic. It flows and changes and I let myself be at the mercy of what wants to come through. Of what possibilities are inherent in that moment of writing. Most of the time I find that a lot more interesting from what I planned. Again Bachelard nicely puts it: “For a dreamer, a dreamer of words, they are all swollen with insanities.” It is a constant back and forth between what the words want me to say and what I want to say with the words. In that process, I believe, both the word and the writer are enriched.
5. What new things have happened in your life/writing in the year since our readers first met you and your writing?
2009 was a busy year. It started with writing collaborated poems, four of which got published in Mutating the Signature issue of qarrtsiluni. Along with that in February my first poem went up here on OGOV with an interview. There were a couple more interviews last year, one with The Peak, and one with The Cascade. Press 1, BluePrintReview, Matrix, Vallum and ditch, poetry that matters gave a home to another 12 poems. The anthology A Verse Map of Vancouver housed another two. I won an Honourable Mention at the SIWC Poetry Contest. The highlight was the 4 Poets book in which Mother Tongue Publishing showcased the work of four emerging British Columbian poets. I had a lot of fun launching it. I must have read at least 25 times last year all together.
In the summer I completed my comprehensive exams in Philosophy of Education and in the Fall presented at the 2nd Symposium on Poetic Inquiry (Prince Edward Island). I had a chapter published in the book Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant Voices in the Social Sciences(comprising of 12 poems). Finally, I completed my first full length manuscript. This spring I will be the feature poet in The New Orphic Review, and I had my first micro story accepted for the BluePrintReview. As of January, I took on the volunteer position of Vancouver/Lower Mainland Representative for the Federation of BC Writers. Phew. It feels like a lot. But it is what I enjoy doing.
Contact Daniela:
Email: daniela(at)livingcode.org
Website: [strangeplaces.livingcode.org]
Author Photo © Frank Lee
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19:02
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One Ghana, One Voice
The village was subdued by a sudden attack of abnormalities,
As the weather drove a wedge between sons of the same mother.
We wondered why it happened same time, every year as we browsed
Through concordances of our superstitions
Slapping blame on whatever peccadilloes we had committed
In complete disregard for the wages of our sins.
This was our state of mind until the old woman uttered words of wisdom,
Words to secure our freedom from naiveté and cluelessness
About this season of tortured skin and tempestuous tempers.
So we listened, we learned, we understood
This cantankerous saga between our hearts and the Harmattan:
We had dealt with what we could do nothing about and we lost.
But harm is harmless when arms are together and men would rather
Understand than undermine each other since the weather
Is no excuse for what we do to each other,
For seasons change but life goes on in the village.
"A Harmattan Matter" is the first of our series of poems on the
Harmattan. New entries will be posted each week, and collected
here.
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19:01
»
One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Born in Ghana, Prince Mensah has twenty-five stage plays to his credit. Some of them have been acted at the Accra Arts Center and at several locations in Accra. His articles and stories have been published in the STEP magazine, P & P, Ghanadot.com and The Free Press. His poetry has been published in the Munyori Journal, UNESCO's Other Voices International Project, The Muse Literary Magazine and the Dublin Writer's Workshop.
Prince Mensah has published seventeen books of poetry. They are Memoirs of A Native Son, I Shall, I Will, I Can (Poetry Inspired by Barack Obama), Afrocentric, ecclesiastes, State of An Abstract Mind, The Griot Metropolitan, The Land of Broken Mirrors, Coronation, Enough is Enough, World War-Free, in praise of the calabash, Prophylaxis, Via Dolorosa, Tabula Rasa, Eclectic, Situational Hazard and Chronology.
Prince is a Consultant in Workplace Mediation, an HIV/AID Treatment Advocate and an Eligible Translator/Interpreter in Twi & Fante for the Judicial Consortium of 40 American States. He lives in the United States with his wife, Charisse.
Prince is the head of North American promotions for One Ghana, One Voice.
Five questions with Prince Mensah:
1. As a child, what was your reaction to the coming of the Harmattan? Has that changed now that you are an adult?
As a child, I dreaded the Harmattan because it made my life miserable. I had itchy skin and could not play soccer, because I was running out of breath every time. Day time in Harmattan was always a period of respiratory torture. However, night time was splendid because the wind was cool and calming. This gave Harmattan a ying-yang effect to it.
As an adult, I have come to understand the Harmattan and how it affects mood and skin. I have now grasped the nature of this interesting West African season because of the marriage of good and bad elements – the cruelty of the wind at day and its calming effects at night. I see that the lessons to life are hidden in nature.
2. Living in the U.S. now, do you miss the Harmattan season at all? And how does it compare to an American winter?
Yes, I miss Harmattan nights – those nights of soothing, playful breeze that gave me the comfort to sleep well. You know, people usually stay up late during the Harmattan season because it occurs around major religious festivities for Muslims and Christians. Eid-al-Fitr and Christmas are both celebrated during Harmattan.
As compared to American winters, like the one we just experienced in the Maryland/DC/Virginia area, Harmattan feels like summer. At least, homeless people can sleep in Harmattan but you do not want to be caught outside in a snow blizzard.
3. Is there any way you can compare Harmattan to life?
Harmattan is life. Life has good and bad sides. Yet we love life and try to do the best we can with it. Harmattan creates angry folks at day but inspires lovers at night. Same season, differing results. There is something to be learned from that.
4. As a poet, what do you think is the best way to get people in Ghana more interested in talking and writing about the nuances of living in Ghana?
Ghanaians love a good show. However, poetry and prose have been neglected because of an artistic and social over-dependence on drama. In Ghana, poetry is not the most lucrative artistic venture and you write poetry because your mind keeps getting flooded with beautiful descriptions of simple things. Prose can be difficult because you have a thousand editors trying to tell you what to do. Writing drama has more potential than the first two because it has the chance to be performed or adapted into a screenplay. The balance is wanting because the three arms of literature work hand in hand. This situation is most unfortunate.
I hope the high schools and universities will find a way to enable students to become original scribes of their own experiences through poetry and prose. I have always held the belief that after 50 years of independence, our beloved country should be able to market her literature to the world. Not only through movies. Not only through music. But through written accounts by the sons and daughters of the motherland.
5. How is life going these days, and how is Mensa Press doing?
Life is interesting, like the Harmattan. Sometimes, it sucks the moisture of hope from one’s existence. Sometimes, it soothes the deepest ache. All these make us all the wiser.
Mensa Press is looking forward to a big year, in terms of promoting Ghanaian and global poetry. We have Foster Toppar’s "By The Rivers of Our Dreams" in the works. We have received spectacular entries of our five soon-to-be published anthologies – "Defiled Sacredness," "The War Against War," "Visions of the Motherland," "We Come From One Place" and "Whispers in the Whirlwind."
We are still asking for more entries because we have not reached the minimum yet. If you have a poet friend, please tell them about this opportunity to market their poetry to the world. I can promise that the poetry we have received so far oozes with originality and we cannot wait to publish the books later on this year. Our website should be functional soon and we seek to become the outlet for original poetry and prose from Ghana.
Contact Prince:
Email: pryncemensah(at)yahoo.com
Website: [www.freewebs.com]
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5:25
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One Ghana, One Voice
As naked as he stands in the sun
He prays in his heart his wills
To the God who weaves his daily meals
On plates from his merciful barn.
Oh! What baffles his little mind,
Not even the seas can sink it
Though he swims to remain fit
For hours non-stop only to be refined.
This photo taken by some seeker
Unravels the secrets of a caterpillar
Grooming himself into a butterfly
To soothe a world with his unsung lullaby.
A courage so courageous carries capricious
Cedis over indignation for the morrow,
Which the hands shall borrow
For life’s issues that tastes boisterous.
A boy stranded in-between two corners
Coils his fear in other to possess
A love difficult to access
In a world bound by countless strangers.
Photo © 2010 Foster Toppar
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5:13
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Foster Kudjoe Toppar was born in Accra on August 6th, 1990, where he currently lives. He had his education at Ghanata Secondary School in General Arts, majoring in Literature. He writes poems with the hope to entertain, inspire and comb the lies and the dandruff out of the hairs of our societies. His works and articles have appeared in both print and electronic media. Among them are OGOV, kpokplomaja.com, faithwriters.com and Christian Journal Newspaper.
Five Questions with Foster Toppar:
1. Which came first, the photo or the poem? Did one inspire the other, or did you bring them together after the fact?
The photo came first. I was taking photos of some activities on the beach during the recent Christmas holidays which I spent at Ningo Prampram. This boy walked to me and asked me in Damgbe to take a photo of him which I humbly did. The photo greatly inspired me to write the poem. I’ve always wanted to do something like this so I thought it was a great opportunity to do just that after taking the photo.
2. What drew you to utilize this particular rhyme scheme? Is it a set scheme you saw in another poem, or is it improvised?
I’ve been doing a lot of reading and studying of both African and Western poetry and what I discover every time I study a poem is overwhelming. So in my comparing and contrasting I came along poems with this rhyme scheme, though I did a little tweaking in the 3rd stanza, as you might have noticed.
3. More specifically, what drew you to change the rhyme scheme in the middle stanza? It makes for a refreshing change.
In my quest for originality in my writings I thought it wise to be more creative as any creative writer would want to be. And so after about a year and half or so of studying the poems posted on the site every now and then I decided to improvise this rhyme scheme in the middle stanza. So unlike the usual rhyme pattern of ‘abba’, in the middle stanza I use ‘aabb’. I guess this sum up the reason for my long silence on OGOV.
4. How important are outside editors, critics, etc. to the development of your writing?
Editors, critics, etc. have tremendous impact on what we write or even say. They are quite important to the development of my writing career. Many of them are the experts with a wealth of experiences so it’ll only do me good to draw some inspiration and advice from them. On the other hand, if they are not there it should not prevent me from exposing my talent and creative skills.
5. It's been over a year since we last heard from you. Give us an update on your life in the last year! How is life in Adenta?
A lot has happened... aside from developing my creative talents, attending book launches, literary nights and poetry readings; I’ve also been doing a lot of religious stuffs like composing songs and ministering in my local church every now and then. I believe poetry and music are like Siamese twins. They are inseparable to some extent. In this case either of them draws inspiration from the other so that neither is left out.
Contact Foster:
topparfoster(at)yahoo.com
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20:00
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One Ghana, One Voice
My mind is blank
A tear falls on my bed, my poor eyes
The light is out
A cricket fills the void
Lying a yard away my books
Thankful like sleep to a slave
Lost to hope and aspiration... the owner
In the next room
Someone turns up the TV volume
In the other a boy shouts to be heard
In mine I write about them.
The TV is suddenly turned off
The crickets return
Dying arguments fade to graves
Then silence.....
The cricket gets a companion
A frog croaks... spicing up the melody
A stray cat joins the chorus
Purring for food
In bed I write
My room... the light is out
My mind is blank
I hear a dog in the distance
Barking... telling its master
Sleep well... you are protected
But remember, more food tomorrow
Near my window
A man shouts into his phone
O.K. Bla... Mechia Maame
Afia ne Abena, bye bye
Illustrating where he is from
Silence.....
My mind is blank
The crickets and the frog sing their song
The cut is gone
Silence.....
A plane thunders through the night
As if seeking audience with the rain god
Now the night is cold
Silence.....
My mind is blank
The crickets.....
Someone drags his feet toward my window
Like a contented fool
Its Kwesi... on the phone
Lying to his girl friend... as usual
I’m stressed... my money is in the bank
I don’t have credit... I will call,
The line cuts, and he curses the network operators’
He goes back the same way he came
Thank God, I have my peace again
Silence.....
My mind is blank
The cricks continue
The TV murmurs... someone has turned it on again
I punch on my keys
Sleep beckons
I put down my phone
Waiting I yawn
My mind is blank
The crickets sing
A door shuts in the corridor
I yawn and wait.
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19:45
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Samuel Adjei Ntow is a final year Business Administration (Marketing option) student of Valley View University. He had his secondary school education at Sekondi College in the Western Region of Ghana, where he grew up. He loves to read and write poetry.
Five Questions with Samuel Adjei Ntow:
1. How long have you been writing poetry?
I have been writing poetry ever since I got introduced to this art in senior secondary school. This happened after the business students, of which I was one, were introduced to literature.
2. Who are your favorite poets? Which poets have most inspired and informed your work?
My favorite poets include Prof. Atukwei Okai, Kwesi Brew, Sylvia Plath, Leopold Senghor and Kofi Anyidoho. Senghor's "Songs for Naett" inspired me to start writing. The imagery in the poem got me hooked even though I had not been in contact with what he was talking about. Kwesi Brew's "The Mesh" also did inspired me to start writing poetry.
3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?
I hope to influence people with the beauty of words and for them to understand and appreciate the power of our thoughts.
4. Is there any poetry-related activity at Valley View these days? If so, what?
There are no poetry related activities here at Valley View University but I have a couple of friends here who love and appreciate poetry, so we meet (not officially) to talk about poetry and what new thing we are writing.
5. When you write, what is the primary audience you have in mind as readers of your poems (yourself, other poets, your friends, Ghanaians, a global audience, etc.)?
Whenever I do write I write with myself as the primary audience. This is because I usually write about what I'm feeling or an experience I am going through. I also believe, though, that there are people out there who somehow identify with my works and these people, be they friends or a global audience, are also a target of mine.
Contact Samuel:
samuelgh.adjei(at)yahoo.com
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19:43
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One Ghana, One Voice
Let the stars lose their grip and fall
Let the sun suspend its light
And make the moon angry and moody
Just to bring lovers’ walk to a sudden halt
Let the rainbow refuse to give its colours
And my love for you will remain unshaken
Let the rain refuse to quench the desert’s thirst
Let the ocean refuse to wave and kiss the shore
Let the strong winds forever continue
To keep the flowers in tremble
And my love for you will remain unshaken
Let the skies tumble
Let Sicily’s Etna spit its fire
Let icebergs melt to overflow the sea
Let meteorites send shivers
Down the world’s spine
And my love for you will remain unshaken
Let butterflies starve flowers of their kiss
Let the harmattan continue to suck grasses pale
Let the land and the river struggle over eldership
Let computers continue to rule the world
My love for you remains unshaken.
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19:21
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Adjei Agyei-Baah is a 31-year old Ghanaian living in Ghana. He holds a Masters of Business Administration degree in Strategic Management and Consultancy Service from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology School of Business, Kumasi. He is an adjunct lecturer in Management Studies.
Some of Adjei's poems have been published in www.modernghana.com and www.kpokplomaja.com. He accidentally discovered his talent of writing when undertaking a research work on children’s rhymes and was asked by his supervisor create his own poems after selecting already existing rhymes from foreign poets. Some of his award winning poems include Mother Is Supreme (Luv FM Mothers’ Day Poetry Promo, 2008) and Similes of Love (Hello FM Valentine's Day Poetry Competition, 2009).
Five Questions with Adjei Agyei-Baah:
1. Was this poem written for someone in particular? And are you lucky enough to be able to spend Valentine's Day with them?
Yes, this poem was written for my fiancee Benedicta, whi is now my dearest wife. In our relationship she once posed a question as to what could bring our relationship to an end, and I decided to respond with this piece. I am fortunate to be sharing this occasion with her, but the sad thing is that we will not be able to go out since her condition now will not permit that. I don't meant that she is sick but just heavy - I think you know what I mean. It will be a moment of reflection on our sweet old days - the good things that have happened and those that are yet to come, not forgetting those who have impacted on our lives.
2. This is your second "occasional" poem on the site. What do you think of as the "shelf life" of your poems? By that I mean, are you hoping more for your poems to be timeless (to speak to future generations), or for them to have a strong impact here and now, at the moment that you share them with others? Obviously, it would be wonderful if a poem could do both, but if you had to choose one, what would it be?
I have always gone in for poems that would be timeless to make me live when I am dead and besides stay to inspire the generation to come, so that they will not only enjoy it but take lessons from it. I also wish to make them feel that they can write and leave their mark for generations to come, and to use it to express themselves whenever they are in love or want to show love to someone.
3. You mentioned in your last profile that you were about to start a poetry recitation competition for students. Could you give us an update on that project?
We are half way through the project as the audition in the various schools have been done. What is left is waiting on the sponsors who promised us some packages for the students, which they are yet to deliver.
4. What does Valentine's Day mean to you and why is it worth celebrating?
Valentine’s Day to me is a day of showing much love to friends, family, lovers and not forgetting the needy. It is worth celebrating because it gives me and my church the opportunity to gives to the orphanages and organize party for the children there and also to spend time with our friends, family and especially with the one we went to spend the rest of our life with.
5. Do you have a Valentine's Day message for all the lonely hearts out there?
There are seasons for everything, time to be lonely hearted and time to have someone to love and care for you, but the most important thing is to love yourself more and there is a God that loves you much much more than you can imagine.
Contact Adjei:
kwakubaa(at)yahoo.com
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0:38
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One Ghana, One Voice
We never asked them to make the trip
Senseless though it seemed they did
Yes! they came to see but never learned
That we never needed them to survive.
In the jungle where lions roared at day
Where cobras roamed the paths at night
Where the ants barely saw the suns’ light
There we built our great empires
Void of their help, void of their greed.
We never asked them not to learn
Senseless, could they even have learned
Yes! but they sought to teach us their ways
Of slander imbued with hypocrisy
Of malice clothed in kindness.
They sought to kill the oak tree of old
They sought to dethrone the crown bearers
They tried to drink but could never swallow
For they were not invited to the ball.
In their true nature of mischief
They sought to divide the indivisible
They sought to sow where they could not harvest
For this is the land that knows its destined rulers
They tried to build but could not break the ground
They drank the streams of the ancestors with greed
They tasted immortality and wanted to live forever
But the streams of the ancestors knew their duties
Where they could not break, there we buried them.
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21:54
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Kwadwo Oteng Owusu is the third born of four siblings. He grew up primarily in Kumasi and graduated from Prempeh College and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology with a B.Sc. Development Planning degree. Currently he is doing his national service in Mfantseman Municipal Assembly, Central Region and is attached to the World Vision Mfantseman ADP, Saltpond.
Five Questions with Kwadwo Oteng Owusu:
1. How long have you been writing poetry?
I have been writing poems since my secondary schools days (in Prempeh College). It was something I started initially as a pastime to wile away time. I just loved playing with words in my mind and then started to put ideas on paper.
2. Who are your favorite poets? Which poets have most inspired and informed your work?
I love stories and this makes me love poets who are story-tellers. This is why I seem to have a liking for poets of African descent: Kofi Anyidoho, Efua Sutherland, Maya Angelou, etc. Funny enough, the person that inspires me most as a poet is Charles Wesley (the Hymnist). I just love the way he played with words and still managed to keep the original meaning of the gospel in them.
3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?
I hope to stimulate thinking with every poem. I want people to read my poems and be spurred on to read more about the topics I have discussed in them. To me, poetry should educate and better still, lead to further education. If my poems achieve this, I will feel I have contributed to society in that small way.
4. What do you think needs to be done to promote and strengthen poetry in Africa?
Poetry has the ability to develop minds in ways not yet explored. I believe avenues like OGOV should be made more accessible to young people interested in poetry. It is all about demand and supply. Painting as an art thrived in medieval and rennaisance periods because Kings showed interest and appreciated such art forms. Society must show interest and this is why I love what OGOV is doing... creating the demand avenue for the supply to come. I believe poems become alive when recited, and so, such avenues should be made more accessible.
5. How important are outside editors, critics, etc. to the development of your writing?
Editors and critics are to writing as examiners are to students. They play a crucial role in making sure people write good materials. Editors help put writings in good standing. Editors play a similar role as the role played by medications between the Physicians and the Patient - the utmost aim is to treat the patient. It's always good to have someone comment on your writing, good or bad it helps a lot. I think editors and critics are a must have if writing is to develop in Africa.
Contact Kwadwo:
okobenus(at)yahoo.com
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20:06
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One Ghana, One Voice
Wofa Adwo, the man of the house
Wofa Adwo ei
Nkaafa
Nipa eregye den
Wofa Adwo the man of the house
Indeed I am
Surrounded by children of no mean ages
He still lives in the dark ages
Of filth, treachery and food shortages
No plan to manage his family
But he is able to afford wine made of barley
Oh poor them
Mobutu the eldest left home
When he found his rhythm
The father had no idea of him
But he muddled through to a foreign land
Years and little was heard of him
Senghor the youngest has started school
But he walks a mile every day
He is tired, but his desire eggs him on
He is sad when he returns home
To no food, no electricity
And another mile to fetch water
Wofa Adwo ei
Nkaafa
Nipa eregye den
Wofa Adwo the man of the house
Indeed I am
There is a gloomy shade of horror for the mother
She is at the mercy of slaps and beatings
When she demands money for upkeep of the home
The home is starving but Adwo is partying with friends
Wofa Adwo ei
Nkanfa
"Man no be firewood" he says
"I will soon vaporize like camphor
So let me have a good time"
His character due him three of his sons dead
But he cares less
He knows he can marry and bring forth again
The woe of his famiy is no worry
When he is belly full behind closed doors
He walks in flashy shoes and clothes
But his house is wailing
Oh Wofa Adwo
Why this, why bring chaos to your home
Wofa Adwo ei
Nkaafa
Nipa eregye den
Wofa Adwo the man of the house
Indeed I am
By virtue of his position as the Abusuapanin
He visits the shrine and consults the oracles
Even here he has stolen the drinks of the spirits
No wonder his six remaining sons
Gang to kill him
And take over his possessions
But he survives with no knowledge
Of the attempt made to terminate his life
Wofa Adwo, in his gluttonous element
Sank into the valley of his family's anger
When he stole the artifacts of the family -
He walks now with nothing
The new Abusuapanin, Peter Dafa
Has said he will inspect
And will take back all the lost family possessions.
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20:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Nana Agyemang Ofosu, born on February 3rd, 1985 in Kumasi, Ghana, is a young poet. He holds a degree in civil engineering from Kwame Nkrumah University of science and technology and is currently honoring his national service at the Department of Urban Roads, Kumasi. As a student of science, he accidentally discovered his interest in poetry when he made a bad comment about a poetry piece of his younger brother. He is a member of an open mic poetry team in Kumasi and also a founding member of Unified Talents, the organizers of Open Mic Poetry.
Five Questions with Nana Agyemang Ofosu:
1. What inspired you to write this poem?
The African approach towards politics really inspired me to write. I, having witnessed political take overs in the current dispensation of democratic governance in Ghana has made me aware of the behaviours of leaders in Africa. And more importantly the Ghanaian family system is no different from politics.
2.Why did you choose to include the refrain in the poem?
This was added for spoken word purpose just to include something comic when I do recite it someday. The very statement "Wofa Adwo ei, Nkaafa, Nipa eregye den" is an old saying of one of my grannies who used to serve in the shrine and the attitude is one similar to the character described in this work. It also brings the poem to life should anyone read it.
3. In June you spoke with us about your upcoming Open Mic Poetry project organized by your group Unified Talents. Do you have any updates on how that project is doing?
The program visited some schools and witnessed massive performances from students. Unfortunately the final event could not be organized due to lack of funds and support. Still, we were able to visit schools and had excellent preliminaries which to us was encouraging. It is hoped that poetry will go down well to the populace, and enjoy the support it deserves. We are still forging ahead to ensure that a final event is organized to give young talents in the senior high schools an opportunity to express themselves through poetry.
4. Can you tell us a bit more about Unified Talents in general?
Unified Talents is a group made up of young minds like myself bringing into life the dreams we have and poetry is a segment of what we do. We are working hard to break grounds to make our seed of greatness germinate, because that is the purpose we believe we are here.
5. Do your colleagues at the Department of Urban Roads know that you write poetry? If so, what do they say about it?
It's surprising how people sometimes cast doubts about one's abilities. People did not believe I could write good stuff, but now they have come to accept that I am talented and have a good taste for creative writing, especially poetry. But one thing is important: when you find what makes you happy never give in to the derogatory remarks of people. I have suffered these before and they can sometimes discourage you.
Contact Nana:
bunitslove(at)yahoo.com, unifiedtalents(at)hotmail.com
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2:40
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One Ghana, One Voice
Beauty’s true constituents lie
beyond the limits of aesthetics
and far above defined symmetry
it takes its originality from virtue
that is peerless and above pettiness
show me what is truly beautiful
and I will show you a pious beauty
distilled in an African pot of honey
tanned in tasseled primordial kiln
on the shores where the sun shines
true beauty is in the deepest recess
of the prehistoric arboreal canopy
that is wild, unseen and untainted
by man’s restless fingers that sour
hives nurtured by nature in secret
once I saw a pious beauty laid waste
on the banks of an old swallow creek
where in a flurry orchids crisscross lilies
O! my skin may be too proud to blush
but my heart bled for a mangled goddess
when will our insane prodding fingers
cease to wither buds before they bloom?
pluck hatchlings from nature’s nursery
before they plum and learn to fly free?
detoxify the atmosphere before we choke?
perhaps until we set the sun at dawn
before it rises to silence our heartbeats.
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22:41
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Dela Black Bobobee is a Ghanaian writer. He was educated in Ghana and Nigeria. He holds a B.A (Hon’s) English, and a Masters of International Law and Diplomacy (MILD), both from the University of Lagos. He is currently studying for an MBA degree in Management.
His works have received much commendations, recognition and had won him several awards. His hobbies are writing, studying foreign languages, and cinematography. He is a Life Member of the prolific Theatre 15 (University of Lagos), Abuja Literary Society (ALS), and the Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN).
Five Questions with Dela Bobobee:
1. How long have you been writing poetry?
I started writing poetry when I was in Form One in what was then Middle School in Ghana. That was in 1978 when I was about 13 years old. It is all coming back to me now. I remember that I usually walked away from the raucous crowd at school during break time to a tiny forest behind our school. It was a very quiet spot I personally named the "Tranquil Woods." That incidentally became the title of the first serious poem that I wrote. I silently observed the quiet nature of the surroundings in contrast to the noisy background of the nearby school. I observed and listened to the wind passing through the stirring leaves on the trees and how it gently swayed the colourful birds on the branches which bowed listlessly in obeisance to the wind’s invisible passage. I would be very glad to showcase that particular poem some day for you to see what those powerful feelings evoked in me at that tender age, and the impact of the lucid descriptive power that was generated. That was a long time ago. I started writing more serious poems much later in life and published many in literary journals in the University and on many sites and blogs on the internet. To me, poetry is the rhythm of life itself, its symmetry is intrinsically manifested in our five senses: visual, auditory, tactile, kinetic and gustatory imageries. There is poetry in the rhythmic sound of the broom sweeping the bare floor at dawn in a colourful rhythmic pattern, there is rhythm in the sound of the pestle and mortar that is generated when pounding fufu, and the spurting sound of hot soup smouldering on the earthenware hearth fireside. There is also a silent rhythm in our heartbeats as we write our thoughts on paper for others to ponder over and argue about.
2. Who are your favorite poets? Which poets have most inspired and informed your work?
There used to be a publication called “Talent For Tomorrow” which published poems selected from submissions from Teacher Training Colleges in Ghana. I read these collections with relish, and the gnawing hunger for more verse created a vacuum in me that compelled me to put my own words on paper. My favourite poets are Dennis Brutus, George Kofi Awoonor Williams, Wole Soyinka, William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson and a few other African poets.
The writers do not matter, what matters most is the message the poetry has for humanity. But to be frank, my greatest inspiration and influence comes from the poetic King David, and the poetic nature of the Psalms he wrote. In those days, while young guys were busily searching dictionaries for sugar-coated words and highly exaggerated vocabulary in their bid to bamboozle and woe prospective girlfriends, I was seeking for help elsewhere. I remember writing a poetic love letter to a girl I met in Accra Girls’ High School while on holidays, not with the aid of a dictionary but by borrowing poetic stanzas from the book of Psalms. May God forgive me, but I couldn’t help the ardent poetic flow of the verses that spill out naturally with deeply fervent and powerful emotional feelings. I guess that is where poetry originates from. From the deep recesses of the soul.
3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?
A poet is a wordsmith with prophetic visions of pent-up emotions alloyed in the subliminal vaults that is made explicit on the grim tufts of reality. To me, a poet has four darts in his arrow; to say what happens in the world, to critique what happens, to imagine new things, and to create a charming entity. Above all these things, I want my poetry not to only criticise but to also proffer solutions to the myriad problems facing humanity today. I have started a poetic movement called "Millennium School of Poetry," which is an attempt to paint a representative picture of what poetry should reflect mostly in the present unique circumstances of the world. It deals with critical global issues and draws heavily from the colour reflection of our present society. I have also carved a niche for myself in Healing Poetry and it is yielding amazing results. My poetry revisits the past, the present and the future to fashion out a just path of introspective in order to forestall any silly and ugly human recurrence of woes. I want my poetry to be a reviewer of mores, to proffer solutions through witty tasselled verses purged in the crucible of conscience through iconoclastic lens of unbiased aesthetics. My poetry will live in the heart of humanity. I have already started seeing encouraging results.
4. How has living in Nigeria affected your view of your homeland?
Yes, that is a very interesting question. My living in Nigeria has greatly affected my view of my homeland in many diverse ways.
I was born and bred in Ghana but was educated in Ghana and Nigeria, and so I guess I have an ample basis for comparisons to assess my candid view of my homeland. Presently, most Nigerians have a lot of admiration for Ghana’s steady economic, social and academic progress. Nigerians are now always berating their country and comparing it to Ghana, which they treat in glowing terms. “Oh just look at the wonderful works that small Ghana is doing politically.” They are agitating for Nigeria authorities to learn a lot of lessons from the Ghanaian electoral process. Nigerians are relocating to Ghana on a daily basis. What they say lures them to Ghana, among other things, are political stability, safety of life and property, good governance, uninterrupted power supply, investment friendly economy and the hospitality and friendliness of Ghanaians. There is a shopping bag here in Nigeria they used to call “Ghana Must Go” which was apparently coined during the mass deportation of foreigners from Nigeria. But nowadays, I hear some Nigerians calling it “Ghana Must Stay”! When I hear foreigners speak of Ghana in pleasant terms like this, it makes me very proud and it evokes much deeper patriotism in me for my homeland.
That is why I feel very bad when I read the bad articles some of our own Ghanaians are writing on the internet about unjustified and less constructive criticism aimed at generating hateful tribal sentiments and political brouhaha. There should be no such thing as power politics and power blocs in the Ghanaian polity, but unfortunately, that is what I see every day. When you see others seeing your own homeland in such positive lights you would certainly know better how to direct your vituperations constructively and find more progressive avenues to show your genuine patriotism. That is what I like about One Ghana, One Voice and what motivated me to join you brilliant chaps.
The blend of elements of Ghana and Nigeria in me was at first seen in a steady flow of both internal and external conflicts. I stubbornly refused to compromise my “Ghanaian Queens English” to speak Nigerian English. Everywhere I go, once I open my mouth to speak all heads would turn in my direction with unconcealed admiration. “Are you a Ghanaian?” My answer is naturally always “Yes, I am.” When I speak, I hear Nigerians say, “Phone!”, pronounced “Fonne”, from the stub of phone-tics. But when I realized that the English language itself is like an orange and the various regional dialects are the different strands of the same whole, I no longer bother that much and now consider it as a means to be heard and understood in a borrowed language. In a diglossia language contact situation we see regionalism in British English, American English, Ghanaian English, Nigeria English, Irish English, Scottish English, Indian English, Singaporean, Jamaican etc. But I tell you, we are all one, and our uniqueness lies not in our disparity but in our unity in diversity.
5. Could you tell us more about the Abuja Literary Society? What influence has being a member had on your life and writing?
Indeed Nigeria has a very long historical list of talented literary brains. Starting from the old school African Writers’ Series publication editor Chinua Achebe, we know how many Nigerian writers who have contributed to immensely to African literature. There is still a very vibrant breed of new generation writers sprouting everywhere in Nigeria. I joined the Abuja Literary Society (ALS) in 2006. The ALS is the brainchild of some a very brilliant Nigerian literary artists. There is no how my joining this group of talented writers would not influence my life and my writing. My first degree in the University of Lagos was English but apart from my academic knowledge, my joining the ALS has greatly enriched my writing and general perception of creative writing in general. It is even more interesting to know that ALS has started plans to form a Ghanaian version of ALS right here in Accra to be called Accra Literary Society Ghana Chapter. It is very funny to notice the coincidence in the similarity of the acronym, ALS. Mr. Victor Anoluefo (the Quill Master), who is also a personal friend of mine told me this when he found out I am a Ghanaian. He is a very versatile individual.
The ALS was formed in August 1999 by Victor Anoluefo (the Quill Master), Ken Ike-Okere (Slam Master) and Dr. Ike Anya (now based in Lagos). It is a forum whereby those with creative talents come together to express their creativity. From one reading in a month, the Abuja Literary Society engages in six readings a month. Ordinarily, it was an open-microphone reading, but now they have diversified into different readings. Among others, the third Friday of every month is dedicated to short stories and the first Saturday of the month is dedicated to its Book Club. It has a host of activities that include Abuja poetry slam, lectures on various topics delivered by well resourced persons, and reading sessions. After each reading, the writers would discuss the suitability or otherwise of the writer’s themes, diction, mechanical accuracy, form, imagery and other literary technique. In most cases, the authors accepted the criticisms in good fate. Certainly the impact of the critical reading no doubt has a very positive impact on the writing of members who have read their works. The association lives up to its responsibility to generate and sustain literary culture in Abuja. ALS and other writers' associations like the Abuja chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) are rapidly shaping Abuja into a global creative city.
My joining ALS has greatly influenced if not my writing then my general perception of art in general.
Contact Dela:
delab(at)mtnnigeria.net
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20:03
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One Ghana, One Voice
It shivers and shakes
quivers and quakes
squeaking, creaking, shrieking.
It tumbles and rumbles,
albeit mumbles and grumbles
from passengers on thistles and brambles
with whose lives it gambles.
Going on safari,
short cut through an alley –
it takes them on a Dakar Rally.
Driver and mate
are subject to hate;
“We are late!”
is the ubiquitous state.
The mate, short of change
precariously balanced, dangling strange
engages in heated verbal exchange
with tempers rising in range.
At each stop
bodies flip-flop like hip-hop,
weary waiters wallop
to join jiggly jalopy’s lop.
Clothed in pealing paint and rust
seats coated with dust
serrated sills slicing soft skins
ripping clothes off in ribbons.
Clad on its back, spread
‘The Lord is my Shepherd’
or other words of faith to be read
by fellows with little sense in the head.
Prayers silently sail against a breakdown
right in the middle of town,
engaging demons in divine duel
lest there is sudden shortage of fuel.
Clutching valuables from that thief
nearing home, they sigh in relief
intending to make the exit brief,
shout with passion and strong belief
Bus stop!
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20:02
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Kwadwo Kwarteng is a young contemporary Ghanaian writer who thinks of poetry as a masterpiece of knowledge painted in different shades of words on a canvas.
He is resident in Ghana and currently works with THE MBAASEM FOUNDATION which seeks to raise awareness on women's issues and support women writers.
Five Questions with Kwadwo Kwarteng:
1. You have a sharp sense of rhythm and rhyme. How did you develop this? Did you read particular poets who inspired you in this regard?
I can't account for my sense of rhythm and rhyme. None of my favourite poets uses this style of writing. Sometimes, I find the words; other times the words find me.
2. Do you read your poems out loud as you edit them? If so, how do you think that affects their development?
No, I don't read my poems out loud as I edit them. I only read them out loud when they're done. What helps me to develop my poems is the rhythm in my typing. I prefer to type my poems straight from my mind to my PC using a word-processor. That way, I see it as it takes form and edit it to my style.
3. Similarly, do you intend for your poems, primarily, to be read on the page, or to be performed?
I leave my poems to my readers to decide how they inteprete it, feel it and relate to it.
4. You definitely sound like a TRƆTRƆ veteran. Do you have any good stories from your travels?
Now that's a good question. One I'd like to share... It happened on my way to the office one Saturday. I had to take two different TRƆTRƆs to get to work (hectic, but necessary). As I got to my final stop and prepared to alight, I felt a sudden tug on my shirt and a shredding sound. No one had to tell me what had happened. In reflex action, I froze and slowly shrank back to my seat. Then I turned to see how bad the damage was. The lower end of the back of my shirt was caught in one of the hinges of the seat (the one closest to the door in front of the mate, if you know the sitting arrangement of Benz 207 TRƆTRƆs). I quietly unhooked what was left of it from the seat and alighted without saying a word. I haven't been able to wear that shirt since.
5. Do you have any new poems or projects that you are working on which our readers may be interested in?
I write as I have new experiences and am inspired by them, so there will be more where that came from.
Contact Kwadwo:
kwadwokwarteng(at)gmail.com
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20:15
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One Ghana, One Voice
In the friendly dark, I wheel
as a bird checks in flight
to glide down streams
and planes of slanting air
so I turn, worn by work
and the dull teeth of care
to find your face, your throat
and the soft dark of your hair;
flesh lies snugged in sheets
the brain, wrapped close in folds
of the still-blanketing night,
awaits the easy balm of dreams,
but my heart soars and wheels
hurtling through the friendly dark
to find your mouth and your heart
and nest quietly there.
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20:14
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One Ghana, One Voice
On December 26th of last year the great South African poet, activist and former political prisoner, Dennis Brutus, died. He was 85. We decided to dedicate a week to his memory. What follows is not a biography or obituary (that can be read
here), but instead the personal responses of two of our regular contributors,
Jabulani Mzinyathi and
Prince Mensah, to the news of Brutus' passing.
Jabulani Mzinyathi's Tribute:
in one of my poems, 'erasing my memories', i wrote as follows:
how can i forget dennis brutus
choose to forget ruth first
choose to forget umkhonto we sizwe
separate me from that struggle
that african struggle for freedom
i was trying to show that there are many heroes of the bigger african struggle. dennis brutus was one of them. i remember meeting him at the zimbabwe international book fair in harare way back in 1993. i had as usual attended the z.i.b.f in order to meet my kith and kin in the writing fraternity.
it was great to meet the grizzled poet. i did not unfortunately have an opportunity to sit down and talk at length with this hero! it was however quite inspiring to meet a great poet in person and hear him speak with a certain directness and simplicity. i detected a streak of humility in him.
i am the least qualified to sing praises to this anti-apartheid activist but let me share with the readers one of his poems which is in the book fair book in a day. this book was published on 6 august 1993 by the z.i.b.f trust.
the poem quoted in extenso reads:
See the garbage heaps of our time
are corpses:
the bodies will be buried
by bulldozers pushing mounds
of bank notes:
Greed pollutes our planet.
Corruption extirpates
our humanity.
if this does not sum up our general state of affairs in very simple terms then i do not know what will. in these few lines there really is the expression of profound thoughts by a poet with a prophetic vision. readers be the judges!
in closing, it is only befitting to send off a poet with a poem:
in the beginning was the word
in the end will be the word
for you used words to confront
confronting the truncheons
confronting the racist jack boots
for yous was righteous indignation
posterity will treasure the words
the struggle is not yet over
'greed pollutes our planet'
there are the old and new foes
your words will be our compass
did you leave poetic attacks on xenophobia
the reversal of the gains of struggle
you must have shed a tear or two
somewhere on the pages must be the tear drops
the activist in you did not die
the activist in you secured immortality
Prince Mensah's Tribute:
To Dennis Brutus
The one who stabbed caesars of apartheid
With words sharper than swords, is dead –
This prison could hold him no more –
No longer shall sorrow rule.
Yes! Yes, the minions of myopia tried
Filling us with death and dread
But we did not obey their crazy law –
They forced us to lose our cool!
We rose because we got sick and tired,
We faced the guns we once feared –
The anger was real, the poetry was raw,
It took the goons back to school –
Back to the college of common conscience,
To the fact that oppression cannot win
Where the love of justice is the ambiance
Of our heart and soul, of our will and being.
O’ Brutus! Not the one who killed Caesar
But the one who seized senseless
Institutionalized racism in
Our own land South Africa
By the horns and said, Enough!
O’ Dennis, we have called but no answer
Has come from your once-restless
Hands or the defiance that drove us to win,
To rise and heal the canker,
To prevail against the tough
Intransigence of the brute abuser –
Praises for you are endless,
Our gratitude is in the dance and din
You hear as winds speak waka
In the land of sacred stuff
Where you are now an honored citizen,
Where no one riles at you because of race
And the many things on the horizon
Are colors of a world we all embrace.
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18:09
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One Ghana, One Voice
Per
OGOV tradition, a new year means a new template. We hope you enjoy it, and if not, don't worry: it will be replaced in 12 months!
Thanks to
Mariska Taylor-Darko (pictured here) for providing the header photo (more of Mariska's photos and poems can be seen on
her blog). If you'd like to submit photos for consideration for next year's header, please check our
Submissions Guidelines.
Here's to a great 2010!
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3:36
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One Ghana, One Voice
Happy New Year, all!
2009 was another successful year for One Ghana, One Voice. We published 52 issues, featuring 56 poems by 31 poets from Ghana and around the world. In addition, we ran three
Special Series and a Roundtable Discussion entitled "
What makes good poetry and who decides it?".
Our readership grew steadily in 2009 and contributions via our comment sections more than doubled, from 225 comments in 2008 to 508 in 2009. We also added the "Followers" system in the sidebar, allowing readers to subscribe to our weekly postings (as well as show that they are fans). We started with a handful of participants and have ended the year with 68 "Followers" - not too shabby!
For a further review of OGOV's news for 2010, check out our
News and Notices page.
Ok, enough preamble: here are the results of your voting for favourite poems of the year! Here's hoping 2010 yields as bountiful a harvest:
Readers' Picks:
Apology to Witches by
Darko Antwi (Issue 3.41, October 10th - 16th, 2009)
Comments on Apology to Witches:
"I chose this poem because it holds a stock of lesson for every African to read. Many times we have lashed out at Europeans for being the sources of our woes. Though they can't be left out entirely, much havoc have caused by we ourselves and the writer explicitly reveals that. He pinpoints some instances where societies have come in to decide the fate of African and makes it quite satirical, compelling readers to reorganise their thoughts and assess themselves before the cast the first stone.
In a nut shell, I chose this poem because it's not meant for relaxation, but instead is meant to cause to people to change their ways in order to see the change that they long been looking for." - Adjei Agyei-Baah
"A critic and a constant on OGOV, Darko has almost single-handedly resurrected the power of analysis on OGOV. With this poem, he goes straight into the issue of projection, of blaming others for the consequences of our actions. Darko fearlessly presents the subject with the splendid couplet:
Nobody did us
We did ourselves" - Prince Mensah
Savannah Rain, West Africa by
Daniela Elza (Issue 3.6, February 7th - 13th, 2009)
Comments on Savannah Rain, West Africa:
"Cinematic. Great pacing. Carries itself in 11 couplets, until the very last line. Harnesses the suddenness of a tropical storm, then slows it down so the reader can experience it as if through a stop-motion lens. It is about the Savannah's most precious and treasured element - water - and how its action shapes everything else." - L.S. Mensah
"Brilliant. Brilliant. And I want to say this again." - Martin Egblewogbe
For my Husband, an Educated Fool by
Nana Yeboaa (Issue 3.23, June 6th - 12th, 2009)
Comments on For my Husband, an Educated Fool:
"Nana Yeboaa just said what so many women would like to say but can't... " - Mariska Taylor-Darko
"I like this poem because it channels the frustrations of women who are caught up in the constant redefinitions of love within and outside a race. It is about the travails in the exposure of familiarity to a terrain of new options. There is a theme akin to the central one in "Things Fall Apart" - the center cannot hold because a new reality has risen on horizons of heritage." - Prince Mensah
Zimbabwe by
Prince Mensah (Issue 3.44, October 31st - November 6th, 2009)
Comments on Zimbabwe:
""Zimbabwe" is a beautifully crafted poem in which Prince explores the ideas of place-naming, identity, and boundaries. He does this with a melodic voice, carrying the reader through the politics of Zimbabwe with seeming effortlessness." - Marta Taylor
"The struggle continues, a bold moving poem Prince." - Ivor W. Hartmann
Staff Picks:
Why Birds Sing by
L.S. Mensah (Issue 3.37, September 12 - 18th, 2009)
Comments on Why Birds Sing:
"L.S. is a treasure. She writes with such probing ability that just one read of her poem is an injustice to the love of poetry. She commands attention from her readers with her style and manages to present language in a bouquet of beautiful images - here's a prophecy: L S will become one of Ghana's top poets. Mark this on the wall." - Prince Mensah
""Why Birds Sing" is my favourite poem published on OGOV in 2009. L.S. Mensah's attention to form and to sound is admirable. Like Edith Faalong in 2008, L.S. has arrived in full form. We can only hope that 2010 will bring us new poets of similar talent - and of course more work from L.S.!" - Rob Taylor
Pantoum #4 by
Van G. Garrett / Fui Koshi (Issue 3.35, September 1st - 4th, 2009)
Comment on Pantoum #4:
""Pantoum #4" is from Van's "Snaps of Ghana" series, which ran on OGOV throughout August and into early September. "Snaps of Ghana", featuring Van's photographs and poems from his travels throughout Ghana, was the first time we focused an entire month on the work of one poet, and was a great success. With or without the rest of the series for support, "Pantoum #4" is a strong poem, utilizing its form to reinforce its themes of relaxation and contemplation." - Rob Taylor
Interregnum by
L.S. Mensah (Issue 3.45, November 7th - 13th, 2009)
Comment on Interregnum:
"What an apt poem! The beauty of being is on display in this poem. This is juxtaposed with the bleak sense of emptiness with laughter-morsels with Brother Silence. L.S. Mensah just gave Zimbabweans a gift, a still picture of existence, a reportage on reality. This poem showcases a poet who is observant of the past, present and future in a single passing moment." - Prince Mensah
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2:26
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One Ghana, One Voice
Remember to get your votes in for your favourite OGOV poem of 2009! Votes need to be in by end-of-day Friday. All the details can be found
here.
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19:02
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One Ghana, One Voice
O’ little town of Bethlehem where
Black and white and brown live -
Above is the star that draws best minds
From east, west, south and north –
They come to see the infant-king,
To bring him gifts and take back home
Stories of divine epiphany –
But I, on anachronistic plane, leave
Here to there, to witness, to receive
At first-hand, news from shepherds
Still dazed from seeing angels –
They run into town, like their herds,
Shouting loudly, ringing bells,
Announcing mysteries about a Messiah -
I see Black Madonna and
Ebony Jesus – not the Mary and Jesus
In overhyped Hollywood movies,
Not the Scofield-inspired baby
Or the Caucasianized infant –
This is a baby whose ancestresses were
Ruth from Moab and Rahab
Of Jericho – so in Jim Crow terms,
A drop of black blood makes
A person black before the law……
So Jesus was a black boy who grew into
Jesus the black man.
I see Him running through streets
Of Aswan, by burned-down libraries
Of Alexandria with black and brown
Friends from Ghanayem –
Living as Egyptian as he could be.
Wise beyond His years, Son of God, Son
Of Man, living under death threats
From kings, this Jesus knew how to live
In a classist, racist, schist world
Of man-made rules and regulations ….
He came to earth to turn it into
A place fit for a real man –
For reality is not what make-believe is -
Not Santa Claus or his green elves,
Not lights, light music and laughter –
But in the way each person receives
Another, the manner one serves
One’s purposes and the factor
That joy is not exclusive to a group of people –
Since the twenty-fifth is not the only purple
Day in cold December,
Remember -
If Jesus was not black, how could he blend in
With children of black Egypt?
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19:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
Biography:
Born in Ghana, Prince Mensah has twenty-five stage plays to his credit. Some of them have been acted at the Accra Arts Center and at several locations in Accra. His articles and stories have been published in the STEP magazine, P & P, Ghanadot.com and The Free Press. His poetry has been published in the Munyori Journal, UNESCO's Other Voices International Project, The Muse Literary Magazine and the Dublin Writer's Workshop.
Prince Mensah has published seventeen books of poetry. They are Memoirs of A Native Son, I Shall, I Will, I Can (Poetry Inspired by Barack Obama), Afrocentric, ecclesiastes, State of An Abstract Mind, The Griot Metropolitan, The Land of Broken Mirrors, Coronation, Enough is Enough, World War-Free, in praise of the calabash, Prophylaxis, Via Dolorosa, Tabula Rasa, Eclectic, Situational Hazard and Chronology.
Prince is a Consultant in Workplace Mediation, an HIV/AID Treatment Advocate and an Eligible Translator/Interpreter in Twi & Fante for the Judicial Consortium of 40 American States. He lives in the United States with his wife, Charisse.
Prince is an Associate Editor for One Ghana, One Voice.
Contact Prince:
Email: pryncemensah(at)yahoo.com
Website: [www.freewebs.com]
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19:11
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One Ghana, One Voice
blockquotebr /siphoning our raw materials stillbr /while in abject poverty we wallowbr /taking away our gold, diamonds and platinumbr /while we adorn our bodies with fake jewellerybr / br /propagating their anglophone ideasbr /spreading their francophone thinkingbr /somewhere lusophone ideas held supremebr /african philosophies on the dung heapbr / br /the poisoned and stunted present cropbr /choosing to forget marcus mosiah garveybr /choosing to forget kwame nkrumahbr /choosing to remove reggae from airwavesbr / br /that dream should now bear fruitbr /these chasms have to be bridgedbr /the senseless bickering should now endbr /africa with mud and spittle get your sight/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-6300078481940811675?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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19:04
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One Ghana, One Voice
span style="font-weight:bold;"Biography:/spanbr /br /blockquotea onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/SMwOolOohII/AAAAAAAAAkM/7CscDv7hYF0/s1600-h/jb_mag.jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/SMwOolOohII/AAAAAAAAAkM/7CscDv7hYF0/s200/jb_mag.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245583756330828930" //aJabulani Mzinyathi was born in 1965 in Ascot, Gweru, Zimbabwe. He calls himself a poet-prophet-philosopher. His pan-African ideals and the teachings of Rastafari greatly inspire him. He is also driven by an immense sense of justice.br /br /His works have been published in numerous magazines in Zimbabwe and elsewhere. You may read his works at: a href="http://jabulanimzinyathi.blogspot.com" target="_blank"http://jabulanimzinyathi.blogspot.com/a./blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Five Questions with Jabulani Mzinyathi:/spanbr /br /blockquote1. How can we ensure that African philosophies are returned from the "dung heap"? Can poetry help? If so, how?br /br /emafrican philosophies have to be returned from the 'dung heap' by africans. in essence i am echoing what bob marley said in one of his timeless songs. he says 'emancipate yourselves from mental slavery none but ourselves can free our minds.' we africans should dispel myths about us. our stories should be told everywhere including the internet. we are low on pride! it is about time we sing our own songs. we do not to continually say according to Plato when we can say according to our elders. wise sayings in africa were not attributed to individuals but elders. the rest of the world must learn this!br /br /poetry can help indeed. there we should capture our past, present and future. poetry has always been a vehicle to pass on messages to the present and the future too.it is for this reason that this poem talks of some great africans. our people will be jolted to sit up and take note of where we have been and where we want to be. there are lots of our unsung heroes while we hold in high esteem david 'deadstone' [livingstone] and others who discovered what we already knew./embr /br /br /2. Do you write primarily for your poems to be read on the page or aloud?br /br /emwhen the word is on the page i call it 'dead on the page' i however write poetry for performance and also for the solitary reader in the comfort of his home or while on a bus or train journey./embr /br /br /3. When you write, who is the primary audience you are considering? Zimbabweans? Africans? Anyone?br /br /emi am a zimbabwean, an african and also a world citizen! i write for anyone. i however have a background that i cannot easily escape. my ultimate goal though is to communicate with the world.what a lofty ideal! if i reach out and touch the world i will have achieved my ultimate goal. as human beings we have lots of shared experiences whether we are yellow, brown, black or white or whatever we call ourselves./embr /br /br /4. Why do you choose to write all in lower case letters?br /br /emi write in lower case and not capital letters. ah, i am not a capitalist so i cannot use capital letters! i use lower case letters in order to shatter conventions. i am a rebel!/embr /br /br /5. Are you currently working on any poems or projects that our readers might be interested in?br /br /emof course my spirit is indefatigable. i am like a beast of burden. i am working on a collection entitled emyearning voices/em. i also am still posting some works on my blogspot: a href="http://jabulanimzinyathi.blogspot.com" target="_blank"jabulanimzinyathi.blogspot.com/a. there are other works available on the internet. readers can simply enter "jabulani mzinyathi" and do a web search. i have been working now for some time on some prose pieces entitled 'turning point.'/em/blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Contact Jabulani:/spanbr /blockquotespan style="font-style:italic;"jmzinyathi1(at)yahoo.co.uk/span/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-1633186839170756980?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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One Ghana, One Voice
blockquotebr /I wish I could write better than this.br /I wish I could write poetrybr /that sounds like a lullaby,br /a sweet, sweet soothing melodybr /that will make all ears smile br /for a while and say, br /in their minds, br /"This beats all by a mile."br /br /I wish I could write better than this. br /I wish I could use a poetry tool, br /make it so coolbr /that no ears "boo."br /br /I wish I could write a lyric,br /a narrative or drama,br /I wish I could communicate my feelingsbr /of love, grief, happiness and despairbr /in my poetry so jaws will drop.br /br /Oh God!br /br /I wish I could use connotative words, br /I wish I could use words beyond their denotations,br /like “A flower represents delicacy,”br /“Starry skies suggest something which has to look up.” br /br /I wish I could write better than this.br /I wish I could write a line as sweet as the taste of wine.br /I wish I could write a stanza that will make me feel like I have won a bonanza.br /A stanza that would turn ‘less’ into ‘more’ and still be concise. br /I wish I could write a rhyme that flows as nice as a fountain. br /br /That will be so nice readers would read br /and loose track of time br /a rhyme with all its repetition like:br /“I have written a lyric br /I leave it to the critics br /to critique br /and make the lyricbr /one to mimic.” br /br /I wish I could use a simile better thanbr /“blood dripped heavily down his headbr /as a rose petal that withered”br /I wish I could use a personification better thanbr /“rough wind, that moans loud, br /grief too sad for song.”br /br /I wish I could use a symbol to represent something other than itself,br /like “The Phoenix and its life cycle represents the ups and downs in human life”br /Oh how I would love to write an excellent poem.br /I want write a poem better than that./blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-8222367246502042674?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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19:11
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One Ghana, One Voice
span style="font-weight:bold;"Biography:/spanbr /br /blockquotea href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/SlBIrevwGzI/AAAAAAAABHA/Dktu_A7aRJ8/s1600-h/georgoe1.jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 168px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/SlBIrevwGzI/AAAAAAAABHA/Dktu_A7aRJ8/s200/georgoe1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354859868768443186" //aGeorge lives in Accra, and is a graduate of the University of Ghana with a BA(Maths/Economics). He is currently working with one of the Government Agencies in Ghana, and is pursuing a Master's degree in International Development Policy. He reads and sometimes does some writing during his free periods./blockquotebr /br /br /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Five Questions with George Amoah:/spanbr /br /blockquote1. How long have you been writing poetry?br /br /It's been a hobby since secondary school but I took it seriously, so to speak, at university, even though it was not something public.br /br /br /2. Who are your favourite poets? Which poets have most inspired and informed your writing?br /br /I wish I could mention a name but the truth is I love good poetry especially from Ghanaians and Africans (Nigerians mostly) and some Western poetry, too.br /br /br /3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?br /br /To help inspire and also help propagate the art of poetry. Also to in my own way help people realise themselves through my poetry.br /br /br /4. "Woes of a Poet" references the phoenix, the central image of your last poem featured on emOne Ghana, One Voice/em, "a href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/2009/07/phoenix-george-amoah.html"The Phoenix/a," which produced a good deal of discussion. Was "Woes of a Poet" written in response to that experience?br /br /No, I actually wrote it before my first poem was published, but what I noticed about poets, and myself as a person, is that we always want to be perfect in whatever we do and so worry a lot about what we do. So even though its particular, once again like my first poem its reality is in everyday life.br /br /br /5. How important are outside editors, critics, etc. to the development of your writing?br /br /You have no idea how much I cherish editors, critics, etc. because without them no one can ever be a better person./blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Contact George:/spanbr /blockquotespan style="font-style:italic;"papadexte(at)yahoo.com/span/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-2650231356706198632?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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4:30
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One Ghana, One Voice
We aren't providing a new poem this week. Instead, we hope that you will review a href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/2007/03/archives.html"our archives/a and vote for your favourite poem of 2009! Whether you are an active contributor or occasional reader of OGOV, we'd like to hear from you!br /br /Please take a look through a href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/2007/03/archives.html"our archives/a and send your vote, along with a short message about why the poem is your pick, to span style="font-style:italic;"oneghanaonevoice(at)gmail.com/span, subject line: Favourite Poem 2009. br /br /Want to lobby for a poem? Feel free to use the comment section below this post. But be sure to vote via email as well, as only those votes will be tallied!br /br /The deadline for votes is January 1st, 2009. Results will be posted on January 2nd, 2010.br /br /You can review the last two years' winners a href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/search/label/Poems%20of%20the%20Year"here/a.br /br /br /p.s. Poems posted throughout December will be up for consideration as well - if something great comes out after you've already voted, we'll allow you to revote.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-5896451268986082145?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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4:24
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One Ghana, One Voice
div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'pobject height='350' width='425'param value='http://youtube.com/v/zEGshiNX4Jk' name='movie'/embed height='350' width='425' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' src='http://youtube.com/v/zEGshiNX4Jk'//object/p/div/embedblockquotebr /Still inside the station waiting on the freedom trainbr /Its inspector came to check on our tickets if we had paidbr /Finally my people shall be home amongst their relatives and peersbr /They could hardly wait to see the city’s horizon slowly disappear into the distancebr /It was one train with many classes the luxurious was the first,br /Then came the middle class citizens and then the economy- that is the worstbr /Not because of its occupants but mainly their conditionsbr /Where they were packed like animals, sweating like the steam engines!br /“All aboard!” that was freedoms last callbr /The destination was democracy, equality for all, but a fewbr /The few being the masses in the lastbr /That were disposable to benefit the upper classbr /“Tickets! Tickets please! Amai you did not pay!br /Do you think you are going to get a free ride on the freedom train?”br /He can clearly see she is sick and in need of urgent assistancebr /“Amai, I am not a doctor, all I want from you is your ticket!’br /So another passenger dies for she could not affordbr /The medication for her ailments, so she succumbed to her soresbr /Across the masses gathered was a hovering of painbr /Another one of us departed from the freedom trainbr /Mountains rolled and valleys passed the few that had the viewbr /Aboard this runaway train of passengers without a crew, but the inspectorbr /They huddled praying justice would prevailbr /But lived within the laws of physics, so they were destined to derailbr /A pregnant mother squirmed as her water broke in panickbr /Hope was her unborn daughter but her birth was none but tragicbr /She only saw the light of day minutes before the crashbr /Sucked back into a darkness with radiance everlastingbr /Everyday the death toll rises from the freedom trains wreckagebr /That never saw democracy but destined us to heavenbr /Through a passage of pain and tribulation attachedbr /That only seems to affect those of us stuck in economy classbr /If only the inspector started checking on the driversbr /There wouldn’t be this ugly scene of checking on survivorsbr /18 April 1980 was the day we left the stationbr /Aboard the freedom train, but still haven’t reached our destinationbr /… Freedom!/blockquotebr /br /br /span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"span style="font-size:85%;""Freedom Train" is part five of our five-part series of poems by Ghanaians on Zimbabwe (though this one is by a Zimbabwean!). To read previous contributions, click a href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/search/label/Zimbabwe%20Series"here/a./span /spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-4269728150545498607?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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4:21
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One Ghana, One Voice
span style="font-weight:bold;"Biography:/spanbr /br /blockquotea href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/SxDsg6zqp9I/AAAAAAAABZg/qvCM3-2Ksc8/s1600/IMG_1742.JPG"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/SxDsg6zqp9I/AAAAAAAABZg/qvCM3-2Ksc8/s200/IMG_1742.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409083202757896146" //aOutspoken is an underground emcee and spoken-word artist from Zimbabwe. He is one half of the hip-hop duo emDialectric Blue /emwith rhyme partner Upmost a.k.a my bruthaz keepa. Known as Outspoken Alpha Intellect (pronounced Eye-ntellect) he is an activist in social movements advocating for the empowerment of the masses. He is also the front runner to the band emOutspoken and the Essence/em.br /br /He has shared stages with greats such as Pops Mohammed, Kwani Experiance, Likwid Flo, Tamika Harper (Georgia me), Imani Woomera, Comrade Fatso and Chabvondoka, Cajus, Bianca Williams, Kabomo, and Soul Dada, just to name a few! Outspoken has toured South Africa and the east coast of the United States. 2009 saw him and his band traveling to Swaziland to perform at emThe Bush Fire Festival/em and most recently to Durban as the closing act of the emPoetry Africa /emfestival finale. /blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Five Questions with Outspoken:/spanbr /br /blockquote1. How long have you been writing poetry? br /br /emI can say that I started writing when I was still in junior school, but actually started performing poetry professionally in 2003/4./embr /br /br /2. Who are your favorite poets? Which poets have most informed and inspired your work? br /br /emTo be honest with you, I started writing as a form of protesting the education system that force fed us information that we didn't want to know and even graded and segregated us through that system. My inspiration then spawned from the downtrodden and oppressed, it was and is influenced by the everyday struggle that we have to face, not by beautiful words or good English. If anything, it is a protest against "the norm" and the trendy. I chose not to read and retrace the footsteps of other poets and rather walk my own. If these paths meet, then I have reason to believe that the many different journeys were inspired to one destination. I do however spend time with great poets by the names of a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirikure_Chirikure" target="_blank"Chirikure Chirikure/a and a href="http://international.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=5758" target="_blank"Julius Chingono/a, and most of my friends are into creative writing!/embr /br /br /3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?br /br /emWhen I started writing I had no agenda, and to date hold no agenda except to ignite discussion or debate upon relevant issues, showing how another point of view exists! I seek for the future and the present to realise that life is not to be dictated by Hollywood blockbusters, magazine pictures and tel-lie-vision programming! If anything it should serve as brain-cleansing to our current state of brainwashing./embr /br /br /4. Do you see hope of the Freedom Train arriving at the station any time soon?br /br /emI don't know why we went on board the Freedom Train to begin with, given how it was known to operate in other countries! Looking at how it is running in South Africa at the moment, one sees the truth of the illusion which is their current state of democracy. The problem with train rides is that they are not to flexible when it comes to direction! Either you are coming or going, but you are stuck on the same tracks, forced to submit to the classes that you can afford, economy class being the most over populated and over burdened while also being the constant that keeps the train running since its always guaranteed to be packed. Another very sad reality is that the station hasn't even been built! Looking at our templates for democracy and freedom anywhere and everywhere on this earth. America to Zimbabwe, it is a situation of politicians taking the peoples power and profiteering from it. We are all gagged, it is only a scenario of who is more gagged than the other, our situation is better than most countries because our oppression is so apparent that you are aware of it. Those that live in the McDonald's illusion and coca-killer reality have a lot to learn about what oppression really is. /embr /br /br /5. Do you think that poetry and spoken word can help speed the arrival of the Freedom Train? If so, how?br /br /emYes, awareness. Once you are aware you are able to act, in fact you have the choice to act or not, given you situation. It is through your brain registering a sharp pain from your thigh that you can act on the ant that has taken your flesh as its breakfast. First there was the word, now it is on those that choose to act upon it to shape and reshape their existence, not to have a freedom that imposes or infringes upon another, but one that works in a beautiful symbiosis with all attached to it. We all want freedom, but at this point in life we also have to ask this very vital question. "what makes me deserve my freedom?". Let's look outside of the freedom train because lest we forget, it is just a mobile prison until you reach your destination... if you reach your destination./embr //blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Contact Outspoken:/spanbr /blockquotespan style="font-style:italic;"alphaintellect(at)gmail.com/span/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-7801066581708634860?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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19:50
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One Ghana, One Voice
blockquotebr /Nobody dies at Zimbabwe baybr /so if we have come here in Bulawayobr /through a travel bookbr /I have nothing to complainbr /when Marechera's black insider housebr /is nearer to us than before,br /let these children sing baobob booksbr /and no night is sweeter than on harmonica,br /your Rhodesia is your end, for another housebr /of hungerbr /you laugh.br /br /Too late for the setting of the sun and the rollingbr /of the worldbr /black daphnes are exhibited in hangingbr /pictures across many galleriesbr /for low voices bubbling below the back stagebr /and lengthening the shore of Africa,br /your seaward silence becomes my Greek standbr /in Mandelbrot's fractal dimension. br //blockquotebr /br /br /span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"span style="font-size:85%;""To my Zimbawean friend" is part four of our five-part series of poems by Ghanaians on Zimbabwe. To read all contributions to the series so far, click a href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/search/label/Zimbabwe%20Series"here/a./span /spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-3190120535889820202?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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19:25
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One Ghana, One Voice
span style="font-weight:bold;"Biography:/spanbr /br /blockquotea href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/Swc0cyaESNI/AAAAAAAABZY/yexnE9kpE6U/s1600/pic4.jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 188px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/Swc0cyaESNI/AAAAAAAABZY/yexnE9kpE6U/s200/pic4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406347546853656786" //a Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah has spent most of his adult life at Winneba. He was for a short time an assistant editor of a daily newspaper, and has been a long time mathematics and science teacher. He has practised poetry and art his entire life. His poetry has been accepted and appeared in international literary magazines and journals in Australia, UK, Scotland, Japan, and other countries. He is currently the editor of a weekly newspaper, emFocusview/em, which has a poetry page to promote traditional, modern, and contemporary poetry writing, reading and performing in Ghana./blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Five Questions with Jacob:/spanbr /br /blockquotebr /1. How long have you been writing poetry?br /br /emI have been writing poetry for the past 19 years./embr /br /br /2. Who are your favorite poets? Which poets have most informed and inspired your work?br /br /emMy favorite poets are a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Donne" target="_Blank"John Donne/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Browning" target="_blank"Robert Browning/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Carlos_Williams" target="_blank"William Carlos Williams/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ee_cummings" target="_blank"e.e. cummings/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_O%27Hara" target="_blank"Frank O'Hara/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Brodsky" target="_blank"Joseph Brodsky/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Brutus" target="_blank"Dennis Brutus/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taban_Lo_Liyong" target="_blank"Taban Lo Liyong/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syl_Cheney-Coker" target="_blank"Syl Cheney-Coker/a... and recently, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Issa" target="_blank"Issa/a, and a href="http://www.worldhaiku.net/poetry/jp/b.natsuishi.htm" target="_blank"Ban'ya Natsuishi/a. All of them have informed and inspired my work through their individualism and bringing poetry to the most art form./embr /br /br /3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?br /br /emTo perform with Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, and Romas./embr /br /br /4. Growing up, what was your vision of Zimbabwe?br /br /emZimbabwe was and is still a beautiful country filled with vibrant writers who hold the tension, hold the energy./embr /br /br /5. What is your vision of Zimbabwe now? Has it changed from your vision growing up? If so, how?br /br /emZimbabwe has a future because Zimbabweans have willpower, the beauty and truth, needed to live full life. The writers, including a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mungoshi" target="_blank"Charles Mungoshi/a (I love his short stories collection,/em The Setting Sun and the Rolling of the Worldem) Solomon Mutswairo, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirikure_Chirikure" target="_blank"Chirikure Chirikure/a, and others the forefront who candle the country's aspiration. Even the memories of a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dambudzo_Marechera" target="_blank"Dambudzo Marechera/a live on. My vision for that country is stronger and brighter than before. I have described my vision of Zimbabwe in a short poem inspired by haiku:br /br /The unbroken linebr /of shadows--br /scattered stone plants/em/blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Contact Jacob:/spanbr /blockquotespan style="font-style:italic;"pveronese60(at)gmail.com/span/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-7823343525221513859?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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20:48
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One Ghana, One Voice
blockquotebr /I remember when I heard it,br /When they discussed it on those talking boxes,br /When I saw it on those visual boxes.br /When it dominated the sermons,br /When even my old man said it before dying.br /They said itbr /Yes, they said it.br /That, it's happened in the east,br /In the north, south and west.br /Even when the Napoleons gathered,br /They went on and on with it.br /That he's done it there,br /And that it comes with the wind.br /And then,br /Alas, the day arrived,br /grew and retired.br /I listened, watched, waited and waited some more.br /Where was it?br /Yes, where was it?br /br /Oh I remember when they talked about Zimbabwe,br /How beautiful and prosperous an economy it wasbr /And how elections had turned it into a quagmire,br /And that it was coming Mama's way.br /But I thought elections were about ballots,br /My siblings thought so too.br /So those who played the drumsbr /Saw dancers who wanted a different tunebr /A tune so un-Zimbabwe-like./blockquotebr /br /br /span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"span style="font-size:85%;""The Wrong Dance" is part three of our five-part series of poems by Ghanaians on Zimbabwe. To read all contributions to the series so far, click a href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/search/label/Zimbabwe%20Series"here/a./span /spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-7780988606976441990?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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20:35
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One Ghana, One Voice
span style="font-weight:bold;"Biography:/spanbr /br /blockquotea href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/Sv4LRKyFZtI/AAAAAAAABZI/h0ozx6pG6oA/s1600-h/odu.jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/Sv4LRKyFZtI/AAAAAAAABZI/h0ozx6pG6oA/s200/odu.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403768992471279314" //aIsaac Oduro-Kwarteng is a fresh graduate from the University of Ghana, where he pursued a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics and Economics. He enjoys writing short poems and short stories. A proud Vandal and Amanfoo, he looks forward to the time when his poetry skills would be developed to the point where he could be published. He is currently a Teaching Assistant at the Mathematics Department of the University of Ghana./blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Five Questions with Isaac:/spanbr /br /blockquotebr /1. How long have you been writing poetry?br /br /emI have been writing short stories since primary school. I however started writing poems around 2002 back in Prempeh College for our magazine 'The Stool.'/embr /br /br /2. Who are your favorite poets? Which poets have most informed and inspired your work?br /br /emI have always been fascinated by a good poem. I like poems that rhyme and at the same time carry on with the main theme. I enjoy the works of a variety of poets. Interestingly, a href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/2008/09/author-profile-edith-faalong.html"Edith Faalong/a, my course mate at school, has always struck me as a contemporary 'Queen Midas' of poems - everything she puts down is a masterpiece. I like the works of a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou" target="_blank"Maya Angelou/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Carlos_Williams" target="_blank"William Carlos Williams/a and a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_Kincaid" target="_blank"Jamaica Kincaid/a./embr /br /br /3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?br /br /emTo enlighten people, to entertain and to educate. I like to write a poem for every situation and aspect of the human life./embr /br /br /4. Growing up, what was your vision of Zimbabwe?br /br /emI am quite young and frankly speaking, Zimbabwe didn't catch my attention at a very tender age neither. But my little research about Zimbabwe showed that it was an economic force in Africa in the 1980's and 1990's, a country of a very promising future./embr /br /br /5. What is your vision of Zimbabwe now? Has it changed from your vision growing up? If so, how?br /br /emZimbabwe is a quagmire of a country now. It is a different picture of how it used to be in the recent past. It really is sad to watch what is going on in that country. It shows how political instability, the greed for political power and unwise economic decisions could plunder a rather promising economy into a bad one. It's a lesson for other African countries too./embr //blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Contact Isaac:/spanbr /blockquotespan style="font-style:italic;"odu.kwat(at)yahoo.com/span/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-5036689801474789033?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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2:36
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One Ghana, One Voice
blockquotebr /span style="font-size:85%;"emI knew exactly what you were going through. It's just that I didn't have the right to discuss your problems… hold on just a little bit longer now./embr /- Lucky Dube, Hold On/spanbr /br /br /In the ruins of Great Zimbabwe span style="font-size:85%;"em[1]/em/span, swallowsbr /Return with mud. Mute – they make a millionbr /Journeys to build their nests where mossesbr /Face true north. Brother Silence muzzledbr /Their tongues with mortis of rigor.br /br /Between Zambezi and Limpopo, the pastbr /And its appurtenances tattoo the plateau,br /And Great Zimbabwe hugs her granites;br /Each to the other, no need for mortar.br /See, O see how she slopes to an almost cornice,br /Apex of a gone civilization:br /br /Belligerent – solemn – stoic –br /br /Bivouacked against every minimbr /Of rain, every quaver of wind.br /Some say her tonguelessness begun,br /When strange footsteps strayed into her caves,br /Forgetting to knock. Whatever the cause,br /br /It unsettles. Who knows, who knows why the sunbr /Propagates the seer’s gaze with solar-pollen?br /The palm wine tapper's calabash is not for the juicebr /Of coconuts, nor the divining bowl for hand dipping.br /br /Even the River of Crocodiles limps with silt.br /Tell me Limpopo, how did Brother Silence castbr /His spell over your catchment? But the river elbows me:br /br /I have work to do.br /I'm only a middle-agedbr /River, shifting sandbanksbr /For my tenant sand martins.br /Inquisitor, let me pass.br /br /Who will bear the blame gourd when Greatbr /Zimbabwe is jettisoned into history’s marginalia?br /br /Perhaps a tour guide, a survivor, mightbr /Bring his charges, point where the Great Enclosure once stood,br /Where emMwari span style="font-size:85%;"[2]/span/em once spoke, before the outbreak of non-sound.br /br /Perhaps they’ll bask in the familiar comfortbr /Of old monuments; now and then catch a moment,br /Now and then, with the contrails of their breath, cup the numb quiet.br /br /Perhaps, they'll stare into its pools, as if the stare, whenbr /Stretched to the thinness of sand strafing the gutbr /Of an hourglass, might unpick some mysterium, stitchedbr /To the loin cloth of Great Zimbabwe's skeletons.br /br /O, I wonder if they’ll wonder, whether oldbr /Monuments, like words, possess their ownbr /Etymologies, which untended, shed their clarities.br /br /Let it not be said we hibernated in the baldbr /Shade of acacias, when our neighbours' fieldsbr /Caught fire, from renegade lightning storms.br /May it not be mentioned we sharedbr /Laughter-morsels with Brother Silence,br /Even as he sharpened his sicklebr /Against his brother’s windpipe.br /br /I am a stranger troubadour, from anotherbr /Corner of our savannah, who, having comebr /This far between rainbow and earth's paw,br /Disembarked my tongue.br /br /I must go now.br /The peddler of parables should notbr /Hear the bearded owl’s ululation.br /br /Let me go now.br /This is a song with many voices.br /Let someone hum the refrain.br //blockquotebr /emspan style="font-size:85%;"[1] Great Zimbabwe is a complex of Iron Age ruins of a civilisation that flourished in modern day Zimbabwe, after which the country is named. The name Zimbabwe comes variously from the Shona words: dzimba woye (venerated houses) or dzimba dza mabwe (houses of stone).br /[2] The Shona Creator God/span/embr /br /br /br /span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"span style="font-size:85%;""Interregnum" is part two of our five-part series of poems by Ghanaians on Zimbabwe. To read all contributions to the series so far, click a href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/search/label/Zimbabwe%20Series"here/a./span /spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-131597184140672927?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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2:31
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One Ghana, One Voice
span style="font-weight:bold;"Biography:/spanbr /br /blockquoteL. S. Mensah was born and raised in Accra, and been living in the UK for the past four years or so. Recently her work has appeared in the annual emBarnet Poetry Anthology/em./blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Five Questions with L. S. Mensah:/spanbr /br /blockquote1. What inspired you to write about Zimbabwe? Was the writing of your poem a response to our submission call, or was the poem already written?br /br /emI started this in response to the submission call, though it took me time to find the hook. Since Great Zimbabwe itself has always found expression in much Zimbabwean writing, I thought I'll explore it too. /embr /br / br /2. Growing up, what was your image of Zimbabwe? Has that changed?br / br /emMy image of Zimbabwe was tied to Bob Marley's "Survival," which had songs like 'So Much Trouble in the World' 'Africa Unite', and of course 'Zimbabwe.' Even if one did not understand the songs, that iconic cover, with the red, yellow, green and black of the flags of all these African countries, conveyed the idea of a people with a common destiny. Maybe that is still true./embr /br /emIn Zimbabwe, the change started almost immediately after Independence. It was barely noticed outside of the country itself when Mugabe turned his wrath on Joshua Nkomo's base in Matabeleland, thus effectively playing tribal politics. The Revolution is truly devouring its own./embr /br / br /3. How do you think we, as outsiders, can help with the current political struggles in Zimbabwe? Should we be involved?br / br /emI don't think one's origins matter when speaking out against oppressive regimes. Just keeping the plight of ordinary Zimbabweans in the public eye is a good place to start. Somehow African governments are more careful about their reputation abroad since that's where the Aid money comes from (though not in Mugabe's case). He is doing very well impoverishing his own people while setting himself up as a victim of the West./embr /br /br /4. What impact do you think our writing about Zimbabwe can have on the current's current political/economic state, if any?br / br /emWilfred Owen had this to say: All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.br / br /But even Owen's assertion is only the beginning, for what kind of truth do we even begin to tell? Who decides what is truth and what isn't? Our various subjectivities will find their way into whatever it is we have to say. Still, if that generates debate, then that's good.br / br /At the very least our writing can help keep the issue alive in the public sphere. /embr /br / br /5. What lessons can Zimbabwe learn from Ghana's history? What lessons can Ghana learn from Zimbabwe?br / br /emI prefer to take the long view: Africa has always had its tyrants - right from the Pharoahs. What that says about our prospects for getting rid of the modern ones, I can't say. However, it is also important to note that they are slowly, but very slowly, beginning to disappear.br /br /Like Zimbabweans, Ghanaians have their monuments too. Still it is not enough just to mull over our sometimes rich black past. Look again at those monuments, and you begin to see the seeds of our difficult present. The reason our monuments have fallen silent is not because we fail to explore them in our writing, but that when we do, we often prefer to stick with the glory bit. br /br /I think the problem all over Africa, we tend to see our leaders, not as people we put in power, and therefore accountable to us, but as fathers of the nation. This gets worse when those leaders have come through the Independence Movement. They start to believe that their sacrifices gives them the right to rule forever.br /br /Mugabe is the classic post independence leader, and as things have become worse, he in turn, has become more brutal, just to stay in power. We know, at least in Ghana, that playing one group against another never helps anyone. There are real grievances but his scorched earth policy is not the way to go. Kristina Rungano, a Zimbabwean poet, offers these lines in her 'After the Rain':/embr /blockquotebr /Tomorrow the tree 'd looked a day more ancientbr /Yet it would still bebr /The same familiar beautiful Zimbabwe.br //blockquotebr /em(The Heinemann Book of African Women's Poetry)/embr //blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Contact L. S.:/spanbr /blockquotespan style="font-style:italic;"nomadafricanus(at)yahoo.co.uk/span/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-5653287115283711149?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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4:30
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One Ghana, One Voice
blockquotebr /Zimba Remabweemspan style="font-size:85%;" [1]/spanbr //emBetween the Zambezi and Limpopo,br /Land of Shona legend and lore.br /Our hearts yearn for morebr /Stories from Monomotapabr /About greatness and gold.br /br /Zimba Remabwe,br /They named you Southern Rhodesiabr /As if the earth belongedbr /Not to the ones they wrongedbr /But struggle begun to flow like lavabr /From volcanoes of dissent.br /br /Zimba Remabwe,br /The first born soil of the earth.br /From Harare to Bulawayobr /Every man is a herobr /In battles of identity customizedbr /By politics and economics.br /br /The land did not belong to Rhodes,br /It did not belong to hordesbr /Of stale imperialism.br /The land Zimbabwe belongs to us,br /The ones who bear her struggles,br /Who kiss her lips when we fall./blockquotebr /span style="font-size:85%;"em[1] Big house of stone./em/spanbr /br /br /span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"span style="font-size:85%;""Zimbabwe" is part one of our five-part series of poems by Ghanaians on Zimbabwe./span /spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-7781534886678728217?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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4:23
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One Ghana, One Voice
strongBiography:/strongbr /blockquotea href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/SutMFe-tJ6I/AAAAAAAABYw/YKcMCXaXYkU/s1600-h/Prince+pic+for+OGOV.jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 191px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/SutMFe-tJ6I/AAAAAAAABYw/YKcMCXaXYkU/s200/Prince+pic+for+OGOV.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398492235432798114" //aBorn in Ghana, Prince Mensah has twenty-five stage plays to his credit. Some of them have been acted at the Accra Arts Center and at several locations in Accra. His articles and stories have been published in the emSTEP magazine/em, emP P/em, emGhanadot.com/em and emThe Free Press/em. His poetry has been published in the emMunyori Journal/em, UNESCO's emOther Voices International Project/em, emThe Muse Literary Magazine /emand the emDublin Writer's Workshop/em.br /br /Prince Mensah has published seventeen books of poetry. They are ema href="http://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Native-Son-Kwasi-Mensah/dp/1606729365/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246148949sr=8-1"Memoirs of A Native Son/a, a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shall-Will-Can-Poetry-Inspired/dp/1608367134/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246148998sr=8-15"I Shall, I Will, I Can (Poetry Inspired by Barack Obama)/a, a href="http://www.amazon.com/Afrocentric-Musings-Prince-Kwasi-Mensah/dp/1442174242/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246148998sr=8-6"Afrocentric/a, a href="http://www.amazon.com/ecclesiastes-Prince-Kwasi-Mensah/dp/1442179503/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246148998sr=8-2"ecclesiastes/a, a href="http://www.amazon.com/State-Abstract-Mind-Chronicles-Fragmentation/dp/1442181184/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246148998sr=8-10"State of An Abstract Mind/a, a href="http://www.amazon.com/Griot-Metropolitan-Prince-Kwasi-Mensah/dp/1442181141/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246148998sr=8-9"The Griot Metropolitan/a, a href="http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Mirrors-Prince-Kwasi-Mensah/dp/144218115X/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246148998sr=8-11"The Land of Broken Mirrors/a, a href="http://www.amazon.com/Coronation-Prince-Kwasi-Mensah/dp/1442181125/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246148998sr=8-7"Coronation/a, a href="http://www.amazon.com/Enough-Prince-Kwasi-Mensah/dp/1442195088/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246148998sr=8-8"Enough is Enough/a, a href="http://www.amazon.com/World-War-Free-Prince-Kwasi-Mensah/dp/1442191031/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246148998sr=8-1"World War-Free/a, in praise of the calabash, a href="http://www.amazon.com/Prophylaxis-Prince-Kwasi-Mensah/dp/1442191848/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246148998sr=8-12"Prophylaxis/a, Via Dolorosa, Tabula Rasa, a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eclectic-Prince-Kwasi-Mensah/dp/1442194979/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246149332sr=8-4"Eclectic/a, a href="http://www.amazon.com/Situational-Hazard-Prince-Kwasi-Mensah/dp/1442191503/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246149332sr=8-3"Situational Hazard/a/em and ema href="http://www.amazon.com/Chronology-Prince-Kwasi-Mensah/dp/1442191090/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1246149332sr=8-13"Chronology/a/em.br /br /Prince is a Consultant in Workplace Mediation, an HIV/AID Treatment Advocate and an Eligible Translator/Interpreter in Twi Fante for the Judicial Consortium of 40 American States. He lives in the United States with his wife, Charisse.br /br /span style="font-style:italic;"Prince is the head of North American promotions for One Ghana, One Voice./span/blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Five questions with Prince Mensah:/spanbr /br /blockquote1. What inspired you to write about Zimbabwe? Was the writing of your poem a response to our submission call, or was the poem already written?br /br /emIt was OGOV’s call for submissions that prompted the creation of this poem. After doing some research on Zimbabwe’s glorious past and volatile present, I realized how important it was to stoke the greatness lying latent in this country./embr /br /br /2. How do you think we, as outsiders, can help with the current political struggles in Zimbabwe? Should we be involved?br /br /emI think, as outsiders, we can only hold the mirrors of opinion and reflect back to Zimbabwe what it represents to us. President Mugabe gives me great ambivalence. On one end, I am proud he is taking shots from nobody. On the other hand, I am disappointed that he is not employing all the brilliant Zimbabwean minds to build the country. I don’t think all the answers to Zimbabwe’s troubles are in his head. For the sake of the Zimbabwe that he risked his life for, he must give way to ideas that will move the country forward, not backward. /embr /br /emGhana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah was the biggest African bankroller for Zimbabwean independence. He believed in the Zimbabwean dream. Robert Mugabe’s first wife, Sally, (who is now deceased) was Ghanaian from Cape Coast. He was once a lecturer at University of Ghana. There is an endearing history between Ghana and Zimbabwe, which can be used in several ways to nudge the present government to do the right thing. An epic struggle continues between the old guards who shed their sweat and blood for independence and the modernists who want to open Zimbabwe to more western ideas. In the end, the struggle for power is a Shakespearean tragedy reenacted in varying forms in African countries./embr /br /br /3. What impact do you think our writing about Zimbabwe can have on the current's current political/economic state, if any?br /br /emZimbabweans have the highest literacy rate in Africa so I know that our writings will find their way to discerning minds who can utilize the sentiments expressed in the poems. That being said, if there is a way to post photos from Zimbabwe to accompany the poems, it would be helpful./embr /br /br /4. What lessons can Zimbabwe learn from Ghana's history? What lessons can Ghana learn from Zimbabwe?br /br /emZimbabweans can learn the power of tolerance from Ghana. Trust me; we have had volatile situations that could have ended up in chaos. Yet, there is a cultural underpinning that rejects bloodshed as a way of solving issues. The way of Gandhi is better than the way of guns. In the end, the best person to change Zimbabwe for the better is the Zimbabwean who is ready to make sacrifices and take risks, in order to move the dream forward.br /br /Ghanaians can learn the value of higher education from Zimbabweans. Getting either a Masters Degree or Doctorate is a rite of passage for Zimbabweans. This enables them to excel in and out of their country, enabling them to garner the experience and expertise to contribute to nation building. I do not mean that holding a graduate degree is the panacea to our problems. However, it opens up possibilities for the individual in a country where opportunities are few./embr /br /br /5. Your poem focuses on the history of Zimbabwe. What lessons can we learn from that history to help effect the present?br /br /emAs one of the earliest kingdoms in continental Africa, Zimbabwe stands for enduring cultural heritage and identity. With centuries of military, political and religious development, the psyche of pre-colonial Zimbabwe was a precursor to the anti-colonial sentiment that surged through Africa through 1960s – 1980s. The lessons that can be learned from the past involve the ability to avoid self-destructive traits and to use whatever helps the Zimbabwean dream to be realized. I trust that President Mugabe and Prime Minister Tsvangirai can work together as fellow Zimbabweans to attack the demons of conflict and power-grabs. In the end, Zimbabwe must not become a victim of vitriol, vanity and vendetta. It deserves better than that./blockquote/embr /br /strongContact Prince:/strongbr /br /blockquoteEmail: empryncemensah(at)yahoo.com/embr /Website: a href="http://www.freewebs.com/pryncemensah/" target="_blank"http://www.freewebs.com/pryncemensah//a/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-6414420999807564453?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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One Ghana, One Voice
blockquotebr /As they search, my future runs.br /What they want, I do not havebr /but things they need, our own blood.br /Why, why, why?!br /br /Never again shall I see the plain,br /the wives, the kids, the birds you name.br /The land is gone, our doom reforms.br /Colour doesn't matter; their shameful blunder.br /br /Our stories so long ago toldbr /by the aging fathers of old.br /The sound of the whip,br /we never forgive.br /We lived righteously in our created glory.br /br /The sins of the whitewashed menbr /became our paths to nature's pen.br /But of the scars we bare,br /I gladly lay them down.br /br /The house on water calls for the Ghanaian drum beat.br /The Zulus retreat so the battle is lost,br /yet there's light for the lost souls,br /the ones who made us known,br /our paths and the search for hope. /blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-8671942338786365649?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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One Ghana, One Voice
span style="font-weight:bold;"Biography:/spanbr /br /blockquotea href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/SuEHIB46JOI/AAAAAAAABYY/QXjVSf1c548/s1600-h/Juanita.jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 116px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/SuEHIB46JOI/AAAAAAAABYY/QXjVSf1c548/s200/Juanita.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5395601663094039778" //aJuanita Tsikata is a 16 year-old Ghanaian and an upcoming poet who prefers to write at night with a torch in hand. She attends St. Johns Catholic School, Year 12 and is pursuing three courses, Biology, History and English. At the moment, she's thinking of further studies in Creative Writing and writing for friends during their "I can't afford a gift" moments. She writes songs and stories as a hobby to pass time and to express herself. Currently she lives with her father in the UK./blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Five Questions with Juanita:/spanbr /br /blockquote1. How long have you been writing poetry?br /br /emI began writing about three years ago to convey my moods, opinions on life, and personal experiences./embr /br /br /2. Who are your favourite poets? Which poets have most informed and inspired your work?br /br /emI have no favourites but the majority of what I read is from a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efua_Sutherland" target="_blank"Efua Sutherland/a, a href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/2008/02/artist-profile-kwesi-brew.html" target="_blank"Kwesi Brew/a and a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ama_Ata_Aidoo" target="_blank"Ama Ata Aidoo/a. I enjoy noting how the poets put their messages across in different voices and styles./embr /br /br /3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?br /br /emI intend to entertain people with the poems as well as bring awareness to the fact that no matter your age or background whatever you put down can transform lives./embr /br /br /4. You are writing at such a young age. What produced in you this early interest in poetry?br /br /emMy mother, all credit goes to her. Two lessons I've never forgotten from her are the inspiration to write selflessly and the ideology on how words influence people and places./embr /br /br /5. What does the average student in your school think of poetry, if they think of it at all?br /br /emUnfortunately, a greater number see poetry as a mess of pointless lines and have not a care in the world for it. There are a handful with the talent and passion, yet they're in hiding for fear of being branded "maximum brained students"./em/blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Contact Juanita:/spanbr /blockquotespan style="font-style:italic;"j_tsikata(at)yahoo.com/span/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-3961180031682226140?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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4:02
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One Ghana, One Voice
blockquotepre style="FONT-FAMILY: georgia"br /Hair covered with an indigo scarfbr /Face turned out towards the windowbr /Arms clasped around a slender framebr /A veritable symbol of “don’t touch me”br /br /Pushed onto the corner as if you’ve beenbr /Flattened onto the door like a slice of tatale span style="font-size:85%;"em[1]/em/spanbr /We are the only passengers in the back seat of this taxi cabbr /What calls your attention so intently, through the window?br / Is it the men or womenbr /Moving dexterously peddling their wares among these vehicles?br /Or it is the array of flags lining the sidewalks like a mini United Nations?br /br /Or is it me, your fellow passengerbr /Whose face you don’t want to seebr /Why don’t you lie back, relax and enjoy the ridebr /After all, you have paid for it, haven’t you?/prebr /br /br /span style="font-size:85%;"em[1] Ghanaian finger food shaped like a pancake but made of ripe plantain/em/span/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-7709041614570789589?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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4:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
span style="font-weight:bold;"Biography:/spanbr /br /blockquotea href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/Stj70Zi_9pI/AAAAAAAABX4/1apOE2hjlcs/s1600-h/009.JPG"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/Stj70Zi_9pI/AAAAAAAABX4/1apOE2hjlcs/s200/009.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393337431405622930" //aTheresah P. Ennin is a lecturer from the university of Cape Coast, Ghana, and a Fulbright scholar doing her PhD in African literature and Languages at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been writing poetry for a while now and has been published in three anthologies by emWoeli Publishing House/em.br //blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Five Questions with Theresah Ennin:/spanbr /br /blockquote1. How long have you been writing poetry?br /br /emI have been writing poetry since I was 12 years. Everything I see, hear or read is a source of inspiration to me. Most of my poems are personal reflections on issues, sometimes deep, sometimes light hearted./embr /br /br /2. Who are your favourite poets? Which poets have most informed and inspired your work?br /br /emI must say that I do not have any favorite poets, I enjoy different kinds of poetry and can enjoy one or two poems from a poet without them being necessarily my favorite. I enjoy a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats"Keats/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Butler_Yeats" target="_blank"Yeats/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ama_Ata_Aidoo" target="_blank"Aidoo/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofi_Awoonor" target="_blank"Awoonor/a, a href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/2008/02/artist-profile-kwesi-brew.html" target="_blank"Brew/a among others./embr /br /br /3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?br /br /emI intend to publish most of my poems especially, the current set I am working on for people to enjoy./embr /br /br /4. How has living away from Ghana effected how you write about your homeland?br /br /emThis current set from which "Woman in a Taxi" comes from is a collection of poems written in exile. My being outside the homeland has added enchantment, quite a lot, to the view, and I find a lot of things to be grateful for back home as well as to be nostalgic about. Secondly, I like taking a step away from what is close up and evaluating what pertains at home to see how best we can make things right, but basically, I now write celebrating what I am because of where I come from./embr /br /br /5. Could you tell our readers a bit more about your PhD research?br /br /emMy PhD research is in African Literature, basically women writers of African descent. I want to examine the portrayal of the female characters as well as issues that are common to all these writers./em /blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Contact Theresah:/spanbr /blockquotespan style="font-style:italic;"emotena(at)yahoo.com/span/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-2387163007599983684?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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One Ghana, One Voice
What a triumph! A poem by Prince Mensah from a few months back, to celebrate: a href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/2009/07/euphoria-prince-mensah_25.html"emEuphoria/em/a!!!!div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-6596873108330930810?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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20:52
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One Ghana, One Voice
blockquotebr /emNobody did usbr /We did ourselves/embr /br /The hay of Ethiopia we didn’t makebr /And a spate of tribal wars we madebr /br /emNobody did usbr /We did ourselves/embr /br /Our huge contribution to faint GDPbr /And low annual income per capitabr /br /emNobody did usbr /We did ourselves /embr /br /The Fee-Market ideas we deposebr /And Communist theory we glorifybr /br /emNobody did usbr /We did ourselves/embr /br /The Theobaldia anulata we breedbr /And the larvae of worms we drinkbr / br /emNobody did usbr /We did ourselves/embr /br /But in other earthly nightmares,br /Some biophysical agents did us./blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-93232615645998630?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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One Ghana, One Voice
span style="font-weight:bold;"Biography:/spanbr /br /blockquotea href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/Ss-4HUS4S0I/AAAAAAAABUA/sHrrgSI6Szw/s1600-h/Darko+1.JPG"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 137px; height: 200px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/Ss-4HUS4S0I/AAAAAAAABUA/sHrrgSI6Szw/s200/Darko+1.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5390729714832264002" //aDarko Antwi was born in Kumasi in May 1976. After his secondary education at Bekwai SDA, and National Service at Adiembra Junior Secondary School, he embarked on a five-year teaching career in local kindergarten and primary schools.br / br /Antwi is the brain behind the development of the concept of Miss Akoto Education, for Ahenkro Literature Foundation – an NGO in Ghana. As a co-founder and executive member of Ashanti Writers Association, he served as the Administrative Co-ordinator (2000-02) under the patronage of the elite literary veteran, E. K. Kwarteng and Akosua Gyamfua Fofie.br / br /Two of his eventful titles: emCyberfutriphobia/em and emSlogans of Hope/em have had successful broadcast at native Otec Radio, 1999 and Fox Radio, 2002 respectively. His emWe Blacks/em has also been drafted for an anthology to be published by the a href="http://www.ghanapoetryproject.com/" target="_blank"Ghana Poetry Project/a. br / br /His epic, emNkrabea/em, was adapted in 2006 by the Pan African Festival, as part of performances for their annual Emancipation Day. The 137-line historical account is also having a regular reading feature at Britain’s Black History Month events.br / br /His written tribute to the Pan-Africanist, Marcus Garvey, emAyekoo!/em, is assembled among an archive of memorabilia at the Marcus Garvey Memorial Library, London. In August 2007, during the 120th birthday of Garvey, emAyekoo!/em appeared in emThe Voice/em, Britain’s major black newspaper. br / br /He is now working on District, an electronic magazine for children. /blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Five Questions with Darko Antwi:/spanbr /br /blockquote1. How long have you been writing poetry?br /br /emI was 18 years when I wrote my first sonnet and a few wretched lines. But I started publication-bound manuscripts in 1998, at 22 years. Counting from the latter age - which I recognise - I have been writing for 11 years./embr /br / br /2. Who are your favourite poets? Which poets have most informed and inspired your work?br /br /emMany. So many of them: a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Donne" target="_blank"Donne/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Marvell" target="_blank"Marvell/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ee_cummings" target="_blank"E.E Cummings/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_K._Chesterton" target="_blank"G.K. Chesterton/a, etc. But a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Brutus" target="_blank"Dennis Brutus/a stands-out as the most inspiring./embr /br / br /3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?br /br /emI wish my poetry entertains. To make someone laugh or smile about something strictly silly/funny within a line. I may end-up educating or informing, but I prioritise light humour./embr /br /br /4. You've become a regular critic here at emOGOV/em. What do you think is the role of the critic in the development of Ghanaian poetry?br /br /emOnce we have come to understand the importance of literary criticism, it brings home how crucial the role of critics is to the development of Ghanaian poetry. In playing his part, the critic should be a laboratory of litmus tests. Theirs is to accomplish excellence by guarding the arts through sound and expert judgement. Analysing a creative work is something I'll feel so much honoured to do - just as much as I enjoy commenting here. Hoping I'll turn professional if I should have the chance to attend University to offer the right course./embr / br /br /5. How has working overseas affected your perspective on your homeland? How has it affected the way you write about it?br /br /emWorking in practically democratic England has helped me to write a few courtesy poems for some leaders in Ghana who believe in rancour and hostility./em/blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Contact Darko:/spanbr /blockquotespan style="font-style:italic;"darko.antwi@yahoo.co.uk/span/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-3368525101118800693?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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2:02
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One Ghana, One Voice
blockquotebr /My Mama said to mebr /Go out and find a manbr /And bring me grandkidsbr /br /I went to the marketplacebr /They sell everythingbr /But no man was for salebr /br /I took the busbr /To the next town; where I heard men were in abundancebr /But alas! Each one was already takenbr /br /So I came home to Mamabr /And said: I didn’t find any manbr /She said I didn’t look hard enoughbr /br /So I went out one nightbr /To the nightclub; where lights go amber and glitzybr /My eyes danced and danced!br /br /So many men!br /I wonder why I never came herebr /Why nobody told me…br /br /So I brought the gentleman homebr /And gave Mama two grandkidsbr /Which indeed made her happybr /br /Mama said to bring her grandkidsbr /She didn’t ask that I find true love... a nice manbr /Who wouldn’t leave after a few yearsbr /br /So many cold nights I’ve known nowbr /So many empty mornings... spent alone in gloombr /Who wants to love a dry, withered old womanbr /Who has two ugly bastards?br /br /Poor Mama, who needed grandkidsbr /And thoughtbr /Thought I met the father in a church! /blockquotebr /br /br /emspan style="font-size:85%;"Old poems at OGOV don't die, but live on in our a href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/2007/03/archives.html"archives/a! Every once in a while we will dust one off for our newer readers to enjoy. "Mama" was the second poem ever published on OGOV, on March 31st, 2007./span /emdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-7910785447297324438?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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2:01
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One Ghana, One Voice
strongBiography:/strongbr /br /blockquotea href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/Rgw3g1sYCfI/AAAAAAAAAAU/7n5kS8sBQOs/s1600-h/Vida+Ayitah.jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/Rgw3g1sYCfI/AAAAAAAAAAU/7n5kS8sBQOs/s200/Vida+Ayitah.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5047470319684028914" //aVida was born on July 19th, 1978 in a small farming community in the Volta Region. She has three sisters and one brother. She is currently living and working in Accra. She enjoys music and dancing as much as she does writing./blockquote br /br /br /br /strongFive Questions with Vida Ayitah:/strongbr /br /blockquote1. Who are your favourite poets? Which poets have most inspired you and informed your work?br /br /ema href="http://people.africadatabase.org/en/profile/15816.html" target="_blank"Mr. Kobena Eyi Acquah/a (Ghana), a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_Jong" target="_blank"Ms. Erica Jong/a (USA)/em.br /br /br /2. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?br /br /emTo inspire people to get in touch with their inner beings. Poetry is such a sensual and emotional thing. We live each day on emotions and senses and it’s my hope that my work can make people identify something within themselves./embr / br /br /3. What is your opinion on the state of African poetry today?br /br /emWell, I think more markets should be created for African poetry. There are so many unknown poets in Ghana today, for instance, young people with great talents who have no avenues to showcase their work. The beauty of African poetry is that it tells a great deal about the African culture, our hopes and dreams. Reading just one poem is like reading a bit of history. The African mind is rich with the voices of the past./em br / br /br /4. What do you think needs to be done to promote and strengthen poetry in Africa?br /br /emThe following steps can be taken to promote and strengthen poetry in Africa: organize workshops for writers, starting from the local scene, create a platform where writers meet and discuss their work, establish poetry magazines to feature new poets (like /emOne Ghana, One Voiceem) and perhaps a market should me made available to sell and promote our work, thus encouraging us to be more passionate and dedicated to our work./em br /br /br /5. "Mama" can be read as being very critical of the perceived role of women in Ghanaian society. In this sense, do you consider it to be a political poem? br /br /emI never thought that ‘Mama’ could be seen as being political in regards to women in our society. The whole idea of the poem was to put across the fact that maybe our mothers should focus on the happiness and welfare of their children rather than on expanding the family tree. /em/blockquotebr /br /br /strongContact Vida:/strongbr /br /blockquoteemakusefako(at)yahoo.com/em/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-2102082405488367479?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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One Ghana, One Voice
blockquotebr /And so it was.br /And it came to pass.br /And it was peaceful, being with her.br /br /emAnd the smoke of our burning went up and upbr /caught up in whorls and spun aroundbr /by the blades of the fan turning lazilybr /in an endless circle./embr /br /Long legged cross leggedbr /reclining in the sofa: Sonia;br /Across the table with the gleaming topbr /leaning forward in the armchair: I.br /br /We might have been –br /but we werebr /smokingbr /and she told me about her sonbr /looking into the future with great faith.br /br /emAnd the smoke of our burning went up and upbr /caught up in whorls and spun around./embr /br /We might have been –br /but we werebr /drinkingbr /and then we discussedbr /The Church The Law and Finances.br /br /And it came to pass, thatbr /we talked about Impotencebr /becausebr /a flaccid penis at the very entrancebr /was a disturbing matter indeedbr /The powers of Viagra notwithstanding.br /br /emAnd the smoke of our burning went up and upbr /caught up in whorls and spun around./embr /br /We discussed the tyrannybr /of Pain and Death;br /The one opportunity for Powerbr /and Myth, and Society, and Misery.br /Then we said, Let’s lighten up!br /So bottoms went up and ends brightened,br /emand the smoke of our burning went up and upbr /caught up in whorls and spun around./embr /br /And so it was.br /br /We might have been friendsbr /bringing the weekend to an end,br /But we werebr /fellow travellers caught in a time warpbr /emand the smoke of our burning went up and up./embr /br /In a moment of kindness she offered me her ass;br /In a moment of silence I raised my glassbr /emand the smoke of our burning went up and upbr /caught up in whorls and spun around./embr /br /Fellow travellers in this space shipbr /sharing the loneliness of our private emgehenna/em.br /Sonia and I, turning words into thoughtsbr /And thoughts into words:br /br /emAnd the words were caught upbr /by the blades of the fanbr /turning lazily in anbr /endless circle./em/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-1074025337178589597?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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One Ghana, One Voice
span style="font-weight:bold;"Biography:/spanbr /br /blockquotea href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/Sr0yn26JPjI/AAAAAAAABT4/Md4q9ba0jaU/s1600-h/martin_abuja_ben.jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 108px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pgdSd0vYhjI/Sr0yn26JPjI/AAAAAAAABT4/Md4q9ba0jaU/s200/martin_abuja_ben.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385516389740658226" //aMartin Egblewogbe currently lives in Accra, Ghana. He holds an MPhil in Physics and is starting a PhD while teaching at the University of Ghana.br /br /For several years he hosted/produced the literary programme "Open Air Theatre" on Radio Univers in Accra, and organised "Just Imagine", a series of poetry recitals from 2003 - 2006. He has also participated in several public book readings in Accra. He currently helps run both a href="http://ghanaianbookreview.com/" target="_blank"The Ghanaian Book Review (Kpoklomaja)/a and the a href="http://www.ghanapoetryproject.com/" target="_blank"Ghana Poetry Project/a. br /br /Martin's writing has been featured in span style="font-style:italic;"The Weekly Spectator/span and span style="font-style:italic;"The Mirror/span, and his works can be found in a number of collections, including span style="font-style:italic;"An Anthology of Contemporary Ghanaian Poems/span. He has won prizes for a number of short stories and spoken word performances. br /br /Apart from Physics and writing, Martin is interested in Philosophy, Still Photography, and Computers (software, hardware)./blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Five Questions with Martin Egblewogbe:/spanbr /br /blockquote1. This poem features a refrain. What effect were you hoping for this device to have on your reader?br /br /emWell, in this instance, the refrain was to keep reminding the reader of the scene in which the piece is set, both literally and as a metaphor./embr /br /br /2. You sometimes use ellipses (...) and other devices to inform your reader of pauses or hesitations in your poems. You also use line breaks and first-letter capitalization to great effect. How much do you think a reader needs to be informed about when to pause while reading, and how much should they be left to determine when to pause on their own?br /br /emI like for my poems to read smoothly, and this is why these devices are included -- to slow the pace of the poem or to speed it up. The breaks are as much for me the writer, as for me the reader. I just hope, after completing a piece, that a reader is not hindered by the arrangement of the lines. But then again, as I mentioned before, my poems are written with a rather selfish intent -- of sounding good to me./embr /br /br /3. Some of your lines have a great sonic effect, such as "Friends clinking glasses before the bombs came down". Do you read your poems aloud to yourself as you write them? For you, how important is the sound of a poem?br /br /emYes, reading the poems aloud is very important to me -- I do not consider a poem complete until it sounds OK and can be read with a minimum of awkward pauses and "hanging" lines -- however, I think that this is difficult to achieve and I am unsure about my success in this particular poem./embr /br /br /4. Give us an update on a href="http://ghanaianbookreview.com/" target="_blank"kpokplomaja/a. How are things going there and how can our readers contribute?br /br /emThe Ghanaian Book Review is growing rather slowly, but it is running and still features a good number of Ghanaian poets and book reviews. The site receives about 400 hits a day, and this is trending upwards. However, the content is not growing as quickly as one would like./embr /br /br /5. Through your work promoting Ghanaian writing you must have come across a number of new writers that our readers aren't familiar with (or should become more familiar with!). Can you suggest a few people we should look out for?br /br /emThere are a good number of poets who are operating outside our current sphere of friends, too many to list here./em /blockquotebr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Contact Martin:/spanbr /blockquotespan style="font-style:italic;"m.egblewogbe(at)gmail.com/span/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-5278759381886901799?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
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One Ghana, One Voice
blockquotebr /emKwame/embr /br /Son of Nkroful,br /son of the slave fortsbr /and football in the fields before them.br /Son of the schoolhouse,br /of dusty Axim streets,br /of cannons pointing all directions,br /towards the seabr /towards the village.br /br /emKwamebr /the things that are done/embr /br /A native son crosses the Atlanticbr /to a land deemed more palatablebr /for conquest, for the knowledgebr /you pull from University stacksbr /and place aside the histories of a peoplebr /whose land has already vanished,br /who whisper from beneath the pavementbr /to go.br /br /emKwamebr /the things that are donebr /in your name –/embr /br /Slathered across the newspaper headlines,br /this child of Saturday, son of Nkrofulbr /a criminal, captive -br /the walls of Ussher fortbr /a slave galley, a smallpox blanketbr /wrapped around your throat.br /You wait, as you have been taught,br /as you have practiced,br /while children play in Axim’s fieldsbr /and cannons rust slowly on their mounts.br /br /emKwamebr /the things that are donebr /in your name –br /I mean, the things that are undone/embr /br /Your people lift you up, out,br /proclaim the land theirs,br /its direction yours –br /this child of Saturday,br /this son of the schoolhouse,br /you do not turn to address your peoplebr /but instead instruct the iron men onbr /how to bend without bursting.br /You teach them how to walk again, to run –br /you show them where to go.br /br /emKwamebr /the things that are donebr /in your name –br /I mean, the things that are undonebr /behind the flimsy façade of your name/embr /br /You tore into the earth, it’s true,br /and it trembled, betrayed,br /yet understanding ‘what must be done.’br /Helicopters chattered, gunshipsbr /patrolled the shores.br /Child of Saturday, when you leftbr /that last time, did you know?br /br /emKwamebr /the things that are donebr /in your name –/embr /br /They buried your body in Guinea,br /the son of the slave forts.br /br /emI mean, the things that are undone/embr /br /They returned your body to Nkroful,br /the son of the schoolhouse.br /br /embehind the flimsy façade of your name/embr /br /They trucked your body to the Capitalbr /and placed it beneath a monument of stone.br /br /Son of the slave forts,br /son of the schoolhouse,br /child of Saturday,br /they’ve buried your body in a fortressbr /and stand behind its minarets,br /cannons pointing all directions –br /children below, bouncing victory and defeatbr /in black and white off their feet and foreheadsbr /back and forth across the sprawling pitch./blockquotebr /br /br /br /emspan style="font-size:85%;"Italicized lines are modified from the poem "Borrowed Airs" by Kobena Eyi Acquah. Read more poems on Nkrumah, from our "Nkrumah Series" of July 2008, /span/ema href="http://oneghanaonevoice.com/search/label/Nkrumah%20Series"emspan style="font-size:85%;"here/span/em/aemspan style="font-size:85%;"./span/emdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-1976719742692512476?l=oneghanaonevoice.com' alt='' //div
