23 Kofi Awoonor
Dr. G. Geetha
Introduction
These are the courageous words of poet, novelist, academic, diplomat, statesman, and an intellectual-visionary, the Ghanaian Kofi Awoonor, who at 78 was killed along with several others in a terrorist attack at the Westgate Mall, in Nairobi, Kenya, on 21st September 2013. Awoonor was attending the 4-day Storymoja Hay Festival and had a poetry performance in the afternoon session of that ill-fated day when news of the blast reached the conference organizers and his absence only confirmed their suspicions. His body was identified and sent to Ghana for cremation and a state funeral.
At the festival of letters, it appeared as if he prophesied his own death. He is supposed to have quoted his ancestor’ according to writer Teju Cole in his “Letter from Nairobi,” “I have something to say. I will say it before death comes. And if I don’t say it, let no one say it for me. I will be the one who will say it.”
Some of the glowing tributes paid to him in recognition of his substantial contribution to African literature, politics and culture bear testimony to his lifetime achievement and the respect he earned worldwide for his commitment towards art and literature. From the 60s until his death, he was ardently involved in literature and the arts but from the 80s to the 90s, he got passionately involved in contemporary politics and his literary works “reflect a life-time engagement in literature and politics, which are his two prime passions.
His death left some kind of anger in Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka who simply said, “Rage, rage, and rage is all I feel”. Mr. Tunde Fagbenle, essayist and columnist for The Punch said, For someone like Kofi who sought a better world in his verses, it is shameful that he been so cruelly silenced. Maxim Uzoatu, poet and essayist, said Awoonor can never be written about in the past tense.“He is an ever present ancestor. His immortal poem, “Songs of Sorrow,” is a classic in excelsis . His novel, ”This Earth, My Brother”, is an existential tour de force. Not even death can kill Kofi Awoonor, let alone the moronic mullahs of terror.”
Kofi Awoonor – details of his place of birth, education, first involvement into politics
George Awoonor-Williams (name changed to Henoga Kofi later as he wanted to remove the Anglicized tag), was born on March 13, 1935, in Weta, Ghana, and educated at Achimota School. Awoonor literally grew up on the lap of his grandmother, a traditional singer of dirges or songs of lament in the Ewe culture, where people burst into song during sad and joyous occasions. Influenced greatly by the poetic traditions of his native Ewe and contemporary and religious symbolism, he employed these to depict Africa during decolonization and his early works suggest a strong influence of these indigenous poetic techniques and crafts.
Awoonor studied literature at the University of London, and during his stay in England, he wrote several radio plays for the British Broadcasting Corporation. He spent the early 1970s in the United States, studying and teaching at various universities in the United States. He earned an M.A. and later (in 1973) a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Stony Brook. While writing about Ghana’s cultural erosion and heritage, he resorted to the traditional lamentation mode for which his poetry gained recognition far and wide. .
He proceeded to the University of Ghana where he taught African literature. He wrote his first poetry book, Rediscovery, during his teaching stint at the University of Ghana. Published in 1964, the book, like most of his works, is based on African oral poetry. While in the USA, he wrote his experimental novel, This Earth, My Brother, and My Blood. In 1975, he returned to Ghana as head of the English department at the University of Gold Coast. Within a few months, he was arrested for helping a soldier accused of plotting to overthrow the military government and was imprisoned without trial but released later. One of Awoonor’s celebrated collections of poems, The House by the Sea, focuses on his experiences in jail.
The prison experiences sharpened his political sensibilities further and Awoonor veered into politics which influenced him to write mostly non –fictional works like Ghana: A Political History from Pre-European to Modern Times (1990) and The African Predicament: Collection of Essays (2006). From 1990 to 1994, he was Ghana’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, where he headed the committee against apartheid. He was also a former Chairman of the Council of State.
2 0 The Genesis of Awoonor’s Artistic and Creative Endeavour – Kofi’s perspectives on the role of a writer/artist, definitions of poetry, and the merging of the traditional and the modern
Like most African writers, to Awoonor too, writing is part of his deep commitment to society and to put in his own words: “A writer is primarily a member of his own society and
… there is no time when he cannot be committed to ending the sufferings of his own people…For where does art and culture stop and the business of life and survival begin?” (Martin Tucker 24). Similarly, he felt strongly that a literary scholar or poet should be involved in politics as African politics is constructed from a socio-cultural base.
In “Tradition and Continuity in African Literature,” Kofi defines the role of an artist who is both a technician and a visionary. There is no division between the two roles for him. His technical competence enables him to select and utilize material: words, wood, raffia, or whatever, which in themselves carry a spirituality or an innate essence. It is from here that the transformation into the visionary realm is primarily fed. Forms and motifs already exist in an assimilated time and world construct , and so he serves only as the instrument of transforming these into an artistic whole based on his own imaginative and cognitive world , …”
Poetry, for Kofi Awoonor is the magic of the word in the true poetic sense. “ The magical and mysterious relationship defining only the very simple and the mundane have beyond time and place, their anchorage in words. Our people say the mouth that eats salt cannot utter falsehood. For the mouth is the source of sacred words, of oaths, promises, prayer, and assertions of our being, presence, affirmation. This is the source of my poetry, the origin of my commitment ..”
In the clash between traditional and Western, Awoonor chose the middle ground, as he saw a possibility somewhere between those two positions. In Breast of the Earth, he says: “Those who call for a total Europeanization of Africa are calling for cultural suicide. Those who are asking for a pure and pristine journey into the past are dreamers who must wake up.”
He came into contact with Kwame Nkrumah during his stint at the Institute of Africa Studies, Ghana Legon, specializing in oral poetry and very strongly influenced by his Africanist ideologies. Nkrumah insisted that they: stimulate the birth of a specifically African literature, which, exploring African themes and the depth of the African soul, will become an integral portion of a general world literature. Not an appendage of world literatur.
List of works
Poetry
Rediscovery and Other Poems (1964)
Night of My Blood (1971)
Ride Me, Memory (1973)
Guardians of the Sacred Word (1974)
The House by the Sea (1978)
Until the Morning After (1987)
Latin American and Caribbean Notebook, poetry, 1992.
The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems (2014)
Novels
This Earth, My Brother (1971)
Comes the Voyager at Last (1992)
Non-fiction
The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture, and Literature of Africa South of the Sahara (1975)
Ghana: A Political History from Pre-European to Modern Times (1990)
The African Predicament: Collection of Essays (2006).
Plays
The Ancestral Power (1972)
Lament (1972)
Themes informing Kofi’s writings
- Kofi’s writings touched on a variety of topics that were of prime concern to Africa – slave trade, colonialism, the personality of the educated African, and the corruptions in African politics.
- Orality is another vital aspect of Kofi’s works and his works validate the fact that African oral forms have the grace and power of rhetoric or poetic authority.
- Hope and the search for a new tomorrow in post colonial Africa stuck with its bitter colonial past, is yet another concern of Kofi.
- a search for a synthesis of Western values and technology with the basically humanistic African culture, marks Kofi’s writing.
- thematically call on Africans to uphold African traditional culture as the realm from which to rediscover the African personality, the African sense of being, and knowledge.
- the painful experience of exile and longing
- his fascinating dance with the prospect of death that began with the tactile and violent possibilities that haunted him during his time in prison.
3 0 . In this segment, we take a closer look at four of Kofi’s poems – Revolution, Harlem on a Winter Night, Weaver Bird, Across a New Dawn
- Revolution, from the volume House by the Sea (1978), was written during the poet’s imprisonment in Ussher Fort Prison. Accra. Kofi’s more passionate engagement in politics marks these poems.
- Harlem on a Winter Night, from Ride me, Memory (1973), is one among other poems of Kofi on his experiences in the United States.
- Weaver Bird, from Rediscovery and Other Poems ( 1964). One of his most anthologized poems and the most popular Like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, it tells the story of the Western colonial subjugation of Africa and its’ people.
- Across a New Dawn from Herding the Lost Lambs (2013)Hope for a new beginning is an important aspect of Kofi’s writing.
3 1 REVOLUTION
We must use our brains for it is better to die
than lie awake however is the mind bare the hungry people,
the army of beggars and
the soldiers with shooting and swagger sticks.
Why must we be afraid of cannons and rains?
For death by any means is Death.
But our death must be Birth,
a trip to the blossoming of fruit trees overabundance of rice,
the overweight of the plantain the eternal season of fish,
is the building of roads, schools, hospitals, homes for
the aged, orphanages for love children and love.
For then we shall have died As heroes,
Only then.
Critical Notes on Revolution
Kofi Awoonor returned in 1975 after an eight-year exile which was mostly in the United States to teach at the University of Ghana. Shortly afterwards, he was arrested on a charge of aiding someone accused of involvement in an attempt to overthrow the military government, the Acheampong regime. He was arrested on 31 December and detained in Ussher Fort Prison for months without trial for his collusion to subvert this regime. A number of human rights organizations based in the U.S. protested in strongest terms and interceded on his behalf that included Amnesty International, P.E.N International and ‘The Committee to Free Kofi’ based at Stony Brook, Long Island. From his prison experiences emerged a fine volume of poems, The House by the Sea (1978), as Ussher Fort Prison was located by the sea. Divided into two segments, the first part is titled, ‘Before the Journey.’ Part Two is titled, Homecoming… Poems from Prison and consists of 19 poems.
After his release from prison in 1976, Awoonor became more and more entwined with Ghanaian politics and government. According to Kofi Anyidoho, his twin brother, writer and academic, Kofi was passionate about what he called the “distresses” of his country and “the chicanery of politics and the men who indulge in them.” Most of the prison poems speak of the torture and morbid descriptions that are characteristic of prison life.
In one of the poems, Revolution: A Chat with Ho Chi Minh’s Ghost, he has a virtual conversation with the erstwhile Chinese revolutionary and freedom fighter who tells him that the most precious gifts are independence and liberty. When Awoonor returned from his sojourn in the United States, he found Ghana under a dictatorial rule. Most African states were under authoritarian rule, corruption, nepotism in the post independence era as African leaders turned increasingly despotic and by the 80s, there was widespread discontent and disillusionment in all of Africa. What was worse is African leaders turned to the West for more and more aid pushing Africa into the dependency groove and reducing it to a mere satellite of the West. The first few lines of Revolution, depict the poet’s dissatisfaction at the current state of things in his country and will even give up is life in the quest for transformation and a free society.
Awoonor’s response to Minh’s Ghost is a clear indication of how annoyed he is at the fact that his people are oppressed under autocracy. “nothing can be more precious than a full life infinite use of our capacity and the ability to hope and dream, and be ourselves”.
Cruelty inflicted on the inmates of the jail are mentioned in quite a few poems: The jail is “The citadel of premeditated madness” and one must visit a jail in order to get the best sleep.
“Time is not measured by the hourglass. But by the rivulets of blood (On Being Told of Torture 163). Defiance against the jail authorities simply meant more physical torture to the inmates but the poet is willing to endure any amount of pain to bring about change: “In a prison yard they crushed the petals of our being.
Even though our bones crunch
Our spirits will not break
until we make a
reckoning in the red bright book
of history. ( On Being Told of Torture , 163)
Undeterred, Kofi, seems unafraid of death. Death, according to him should lead to a new birth. The old order should yield to new Africa where its people have plenty food and happiness and the necessary infrastructure. A life unexamined is not worth living. His critical outlook towards African society is unmistakable, when he speaks of the time when there will be an abundance of food, infrastructure and basic necessities for all. He chastises his fellow beings for looking for outside help to solve their problems:
Why must we think Others will lead our horses Herd our sheep
And feed our people? (To Feed Our People 14 )
The time spent within the locked-doors of Ussher Fort Prison, seems to have given him a totally new perspective of the world at large and to look inward as well. Most poems were written on toilet paper and smuggled out. The locked-up door of the Slave fort of Ussher and the vast expansive sea with sea-gulls in flight is a persistent image to suggest the poet’s curtailment of liberty and freedom. While in jail, he is highly sensitive to the happenings around him, like the Soweto riots of South Africa in the poem, The Wayfarer Comes Home.
The place is by the sea
At night you recall it all
While the door is locked. The Place, 176
Harlem, the dark dirge of America heard at evening mean alleyways of poverty dispossession, early death in jammed doorways and creaking elevators, glaring defeat in the morning of this beautiful beautiful America.
Critical notes on Harlem on a WinterNight
Awoonor’s poetic career took off from the Ewe oral tradition, but did not end there. There were points of departure, to other places, other people, and other times, though there is almost always in his poems a return to his primal origins and sources of inspiration (Dictionary of Literary Biography 112). The evocation of sad and realistic images in ‘Harlem on a Winter Night, from the collection Ride Me, Memory (1973), are recreated from his previous travels to the United States and some of the poems are America, Sketches of Long Island, etc.
‘Harlem’ is ‘the dark dirge of beautiful America as perceived by the outside world just like an ugly wart on a flawless, unblemished skin. Harlem, the political and cultural capital of Black America reminds us of the dark chapter in American history – the racial segregation and repression of Blacks for centuries in the south and which subsequently led to the Civil War. ‘Harlem,’ a neighbourhood in New York, a major hub of the African American community, is indeed a symbol of oppression, of the marginalized and the dispossessed, rampant poverty and violence. Harlem was also the epicenter of the Harlem Renaissance, a major creative explosion in music, literature, and art that occurred during the 1910s and 1920s, Several African Americans sought refuge in Harlem from the frequent discrimination they faced in other parts of the country resulting in a seventy per cent Black population by 1930; when millions of blacks moved north due to poor conditions in the South and known as the Great Migration. The 1970s is considered the worst time in Harlem’s history as poverty was an all time high and lack of basic infrastructure. Jobs were scarce and a proliferation of crime .The Harlem Renaissance is the source of the black culture that we see today.
Awoonor through a series of bleak, dismal and sordid imagery is able to successfully convey the economically and socially disadvantaged life of the Blacks like scores of other African American writers have done in the past. The Blacks are huddled together,like a group of animals and the only sound on the dull winter night is the police siren wailing, suggesting vigil and a rise in the crime rate. The Blacks lack an entity and identity and hence they are reduced to ‘anonymity’ and their living conditions are deplorable and pathetic too. ‘Creaking elevators’ and ‘jammed doors’ suggest the lack of decent infrastructure. Overall, Harlem is America’s ‘glaring defeat’ though to the outside world America is the most successful nation and leads the world in the global hegemony. Harlem is an indication of the spirit of intolerance and non inclusiveness of the Blacks, subjected to racial segregation for centuries. The grey and dark colours of Harlem where arms beg for food and hands grope in communal dustbins is an ‘eternal nightmare’ and absolutely ‘mean’ and unfair when the entire America is considered so beautiful and bright on a sunny morning whereas Harlem is equated to a dark winter evening, like a sad song. .
African American poet and playwright Langston Hughes’ poem, on ‘Harlem’ (1951), two decades earlier where he discusses the social and political marginalization of African Americans who do not even possess rights to dream. “What happens to a dream deferred?” is how the poem begins and he continues to evoke several imagery suggestive of the dreams of the Blacks which are “ drying up, festering, stinking, crusting over, or, finally, exploding.” If African Americans dared to dream, their plans would only end up rotting or even exploding.
“Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet? “ (Harlem, Langston Hughes)
Rashidah Ismaili Abubakr, is an African poet, playwright, essayist and short story writer who has lived in Harlem all her life and she mentions how as an African, Muslim woman life was in the 60s, in her book, Autobiography of the Lower East Side, (2014). “These were the ’60s, .. Black women had to understand their manly needs, walk ten paces behind, submit to male authority… Most of all we were to remain unconditionally loyal to the Black man and never, under any circumstance, be seen in intimate association with a White man. This, of course, was in stark contrast to the behavior of almost all of the men I knew–excuse me, brothers–who had not a single “significant other” but several White women as lovers and wives.
THE WEAVER BIRD
The weaver bird built in our house
And laid its eggs on our only tree.
We did not want to send it away.
We watched the building of the nest
And supervised the egg-laying.
And the weaver returned in the guise of the owner.
Preaching salvation to us that owned the house.
They say it came from the west
Where the storms at sea had felled the gulls,
And the fishers dried their nets by lantern light.
Its sermon is the divination of ourselves
And our new horizon limits at its nest.
But we cannot join the prayers and answers of the communications.
We look for new homes every day,
For new altars we strive to rebuild
The old shrines defiled by the weaver’s excrement.
Critical notes on Weaver Bird
Weaver Bird, Cathedral, and Easter Dawn can be broadly categorized as Awoonor’s religious poems. A pungent satire on the colonialists’ intervention into his country, Awoonor, in the poem, Weaver Bird, uses the weaver bird as a metaphor to describe the colonialists’ subjugation of the indigenous culture, beliefs and practices, and their domination. It appears that the weaver bird came from the far West;
“They say it came from the west
Where the storms at sea had felled the gulls,
And the fishers dried their nets by lantern light.”
The weaver initially tries to build a temporary nest for itself but within the next few lines, the bird behaves like the owner of the land and its inhabitants and is: “Preaching salvation to us that owned the house”. Just like the various colonialists’ who came as guests to the various regions in Africa but later owned not only the land but also colonized the psyche of the natives. The European missionaries and the geographer-explorers who came to the African continent too did the same. They ‘othered’ Africans as uncivilized and saw them as savages and believed that they had to civilize the native Africans and only the West could offer them salvation.
This fact is beautifully summed up in the poem and reminds us of the stereotypical novels like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The bird had also defiled and desanctified the immediate surroundings with its excrement. The colonial powers in Africa too denounced indigenous cultures and civilizations superimposing their ideologies and institutions and now he pleads with his people to come out of the spell of western civilization and rebuild an ‘African personality’.
“We look for new homes every day, For new altars we strive to rebuild”
Awoonor is also critical of his own people as well in letting the colonialists’ to enter their territory and allow them to dominate and exploit them. Somali author Nuruddin Farah too is extremely critical of the Somalis in leading their country to disaster and takes every opportunity through his writings to lay the blame squarely on his people for not leading the way and for their lack of dreams and aspirations. The Weaver Bird and Cathedral described as ‘ A huge senseless cathedral of doom’ are poems that demonstrate the poet’s serious indictment of the Western civilization and culture especially Christianity which they bequeathed to the indigenous population. ‘Excrement’ again suggests Awoonor’s profound hate and dislike of the beliefs and practices of the West which obliterated the indigenous way of life.
“In the image of the weaver bird, notorious for its colonizing crusades, Europe’s presence in African is sketched in sharp outline as a sinister despoiler of homesteads and sacred grounds.” (DLB 82). Africa realizes the tragic error or blunder only when the weaver returns in the guise of the owner.
ACROSS A NEWDAWN
Sometimes, we read the
lines in thegreen leaf
run our fingers over the
smooth of the precious wood
from our ancient trees;
Sometimes, even the sunset
Puzzles, as we look
for the lines that propel the clouds,
the colour scheme
with the multiple designs
that the first artist put together
There is dancing in the streets again
the laughter of children rings
through the house
On the seaside, the ruins recent
from the latest storms
remind of ancestral wealth
pillaged purloined pawned
by an unthinking grandfather
who lived the life of a lord
and drove coming generations to despair and ruin
But who says our time is up
that the box maker and the digger
are in conference
or that the preachers have aired their robes
and the choir and the drummers
are in rehearsal?
No; where the worm eats
A grain grows,
The consultant deities
have measured the time
with long-wined
arguments of eternity
And death, when he comes
to the door with his own
inimitable calling card
shall find a homestead
resurrected with laughter
and dance and the festival of the meat
of the young lamb and the red porridge
of the new corn
we are the celebrants
whose fields were
overturn by rogues
and other bad men who
interrupted our dance
with obscene songs and bad gestures
Someone said an ailing fish
Swam up our lagoon
Seeking a place to lay its load
In consonance with the Original Plan
Master, if you can be the oarsman
for our boat
please do it, do it.
I asked you before
once upon a shore
at home, where the
seafront has narrowed
to the brief space of childhood
We welcome the travelers
come home on the new boat
fresh from the upright tree.
Critical notes on Across a New Dawn
The poem, Across a New Dawn, is a classical example of Awoonor’s steadfast hope for a new dawn, a new beginning. All hope is not lost for Africa and Africans, looted and exploited in every sense of the term – “ancestral wealth pillaged purloined pawned”.
This calamitous colonial interlude was made possible by his own unthinking people whom he rebukes as, “ an unthinking grandfather who lived the life of a lord and drove coming generations to despair and ruin.”
Africans have been vulnerable and the colonialist chapter has led to so many faultlines by carving Africa into states and nations, to suit their convenience which has led and is still leading and fuelling ethnic hatred and genocide. Somalia, has been dubbed as a failed state since 1993, as it could never function as a sovereign state having superimposed a Westphalian state model upon decentralized pastoral region. The Rwandan genocide is yet another violent chapter in Africa’s history. There are more and more examples till date. The damage done by the Western colonialists is expressed in the poem thus:
“…whose fields were
overturn by rogues
and other bad men who
interrupted our dance
with obscene songs and bad gestures”
Yet, the poet provides positive images despite the many setbacks suffered by the continent and assault by foreign powers. ‘The promise of hope,’ is obviously there in the imagery:
“ where the worm eats A grain grows,..”
The poet resists Death once again like in the prison verses. Here he says there is much to be done, unfinished tasks and duties. Box maker digger, preacher, choir and drummers are all symbols of death and funeral. There is no death or dying in Africa, as Africa has to move forward after being oppressed and pushed to servitude by their foreign masters. The poet looks forward to re(brith) and re(generation) after years of violent histories and geographies in his country.
“But who says our time is up
that the box maker and the digger
are in conference
or that the preachers have aired their
robes and the choir and the drummers
are in rehearsal?”
According to Kofi Anyidoho, “ We hold our breath as the poet looks across a new dawn and introduces us to Death holding out his own ‘inimitable calling card’ only to be ushered into” (32, Retrospect, The Promise of Hope).
“… a homestead resurrected with laughter and dance and the festival of the meat of the young lamb and the red porridge of the new corn”
Awoonor has always strived very hard to write about the ultimate victory over sorry especially in the death and resurrection of Hope through various creative transformations and adaptations. (32 Ibid). Across a New Dawn is Awoonor’s promise of hope.
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References
- Anyidoho, Kofi. (ed.), The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems, 1964-2013. Lincoln/ University of Nebraska Press, 2014.
- Cole, Teju. “Letter from Nairobi: I will say it before Death comes.” The New Yorker. September 26, 2013
- <http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/letter-from-nairobi-i-will-say-it-before- death-comes>
- Tucker, Martin. “Kofi Awoonor’s Prison. WorldView, November 1979: 22-24
- Tucker, Martin. “Kofi Awoonor: Restraint and Release. English in Africa.” JSTOR. Vol. 6, No. 1 (1979): 46-51
- George Kofi Awoonor Williams, The Encyclopedia Britannica. 3-25-2014 . https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kofi-Awoonor>
- Duoda, Cameron. “Professor Kofi Awoonor: Poet and novelist whose work fused the traditional and the modern.” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-kofi- awoonor-poet-and-novelist-whose-work-fused-the-traditional-and-the-modern- 8837363.html
- Innes, Lyn. “ Kofi Awoonor Obituary.” The Guardian. 23 September 2013.
- < https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/23/kofi-awoonor.>