{"id":209,"date":"2019-05-14T06:32:07","date_gmt":"2019-05-14T06:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engp06.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&p=209"},"modified":"2019-05-15T07:03:54","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T07:03:54","slug":"kofi-awoonor","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp06\/chapter\/kofi-awoonor\/","title":{"rendered":"Kofi Awoonor"},"content":{"raw":"
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Introduction\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

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.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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At the festival of letters, it appeared as if he prophesied his own death. He is supposed to have quoted his ancestor\u2019 according to writer Teju Cole in his \u201cLetter from Nairobi,\u201d \u201cI have something to say. I will say it before death comes. And if I don\u2019t say it, let no one say it for me. I will be the one who will say it.\u201d<\/p>\r\n \r\n

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\u00a0 in literature and the arts but from the 80s to the\u00a0 90s, he got passionately involved in contemporary politics and his literary works \u201creflect a life-time engagement in literature and politics, which are his two prime passions.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

His death left some kind of anger in Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka who simply said, \u201cRage, rage, and rage is all I feel\u201d. Mr. Tunde Fagbenle, essayist and columnist for The Punch <\/em>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.\u201cHe is an ever present ancestor. His immortal poem, \u201cSongs of Sorrow,\u201d is a classic in excelsis . His novel, \u201dThis Earth, My Brother<\/em>\u201d, is an existential tour de force. Not even death can kill Kofi Awoonor, let alone the moronic mullahs of terror.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0Kofi Awoonor \u2013 details of his place of birth, education, first involvement into politics<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n

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.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

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\u2019s cultural erosion and heritage, he resorted to the traditional lamentation mode for which his poetry gained recognition far and wide. .<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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He proceeded to the University of Ghana where he taught African literature. He wrote his first poetry book, Rediscovery<\/em>, 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, <\/em>and My Blood<\/em>. In 1975,\u00a0 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\u2019s celebrated collections of poems, The House by the Sea, <\/em>focuses on his experiences in jail.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The prison experiences sharpened his political sensibilities further and Awoonor veered into politics which influenced him to write mostly non \u2013fictional 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\u2019s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, where he headed the committee against apartheid. He was also a former Chairman of the Council of State.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

2 0 The Genesis of\u00a0 Awoonor\u2019s Artistic and Creative Endeavour \u2013 Kofi\u2019s perspectives on the role of a writer\/artist, definitions of poetry, and the merging of the traditional and the modern<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Like most African writers, to Awoonor too, writing is part of his deep commitment to society and to put in his own words: \u201cA writer is primarily a member of his own society and<\/p>\r\n \r\n

\u2026 there is no time when he cannot be committed to ending the sufferings of his own people\u2026For where does art and culture stop and the business of life and survival begin?\u201d (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.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In \u201cTradition and Continuity in African Literature,\u201d 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 , \u2026\u201d<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Poetry, for Kofi Awoonor is the magic of the word in the true poetic sense.\u00a0 \u201c The\u00a0 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 ..\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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: \u201cThose 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.\u201d<\/p>\r\n \r\n

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.<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0List of works<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\nPoetry<\/strong>\r\n\r\n\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nRediscovery and Other Poems (1964)\r\n\r\nNight of My Blood (1971)\r\n\r\nRide Me, Memory (1973)\r\n\r\nGuardians of the Sacred Word (1974)\r\n\r\nThe House by the Sea (1978)\r\n\r\nUntil the Morning After (1987)\r\n

Latin American and Caribbean Notebook, poetry, 1992.<\/p>\r\n

The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems (2014)<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nNovels<\/strong>\r\n\r\n\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nThis Earth, My Brother (1971)\r\n\r\nComes the Voyager at Last (1992)\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nNon-fiction<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture, and Literature of Africa South of the Sahara (1975)<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nGhana: A Political History from Pre-European to Modern Times (1990)\r\n\r\nThe African Predicament: Collection of Essays (2006).\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nPlays<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nThe Ancestral Power (1972)\r\n\r\nLament (1972)\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\u00a0Themes informing Kofi\u2019s writings<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n