Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor died during attack at Nairobian shopping mall
Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor
died during attack at Nairobian shopping mall
23 september 2013
Ghanaian poet Professor Kofi Awoonor has died during the attack at Nairobian shopping centre Westgate Mall. He died on Saturday, aged 78, from injuries sustained in the attack in Nairobi.
Kofi Awoonor was in Nairobi to speak at the Storymoja Hay Festival, a four-day international litarary festival. Performers were also Ghanaian poets Nii Parkes and Kwame Dawes. Awoonor was due to perform on this festival on Saturday evening.
Awoonor was born in 1935 and became known for his poetry, inspired by the oral poetry of his native Ewe tribe. Awoonor gained a masters degree in literature at London University in 1970. His second collection of poetry, Night of My Blood, was published in 1971, a series of poems that explore his roots of colonialism and foreign rule in Africa.
His son was also shot, but has later been discharged from hospital.
Kofi Awoonor
Songs of Sorrow
I
Dzogbese Lisa has treated me thus
It has led me among the sharps of the forest
Returning is not possible
And going forward is a great difficulty
The affairs of this world are like the chameleon faeces
Into which I have stepped
When I clean it cannot go.
I am on the world’s extreme corner,
I am not sitting in the row with the eminent
But those who are lucky
Sit in the middle and forget
I am on the world’s extreme corner
I can only go beyond and forget.
My people, I have been somewhere
If I turn here, the rain beats me
If I turn there the sun burns me
The firewood of this world
Is for only those who can take heart
That is why not all can gather it.
The world is not good for anybody
But you are so happy with your fate;
Alas! the travelers are back
All covered with debt.
II
Something has happened to me
The things so great that I cannot weep
I have no sons to fire the gun when I die
And no daughter to wail when I close my mouth
I have wandered on the wilderness
The great wilderness men call life
The rain has beaten me,
And the sharp stumps cut as keen as knives
I shall go beyond and rest.
I have no kin and no brother,
Death has made war upon our house;
And Kpeti’s great household is no more,
Only the broken fence stands;
And those who dared not look in his face
Have come out as men.
How well their pride is with them.
Let those gone before take note
They have treated their offspring badly.
What is the wailing for?
Somebody is dead. Agosu himself
Alas! a snake has bitten me
My right arm is broken,
And the tree on which I lean is fallen.
Agosi if you go tell them,
Tell Nyidevu, Kpeti, and Kove
That they have done us evil;
Tell them their house is falling
And the trees in the fence
Have been eaten by termites
That the martels curse them.
Ask them why they idle there
While we suffer, and eat sand.
And the crow and the vulture
Hover always above our broken fences
And strangers walk over our portion.
Publications
1964 Rediscovery and Other Poems (poetry)
1971 Night of My Blood (poetry)
1971 This Earth, My Brother … An Allegorical Tale of Africa (novel)
1972 Come Back, Ghana
1973 Ride Me, Memory (poetry)
1975 The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture and Literature of Africa South of the Sahara
1978 The House by the Sea (poetry)
1984 The Ghana Revolution: A Background Account from a Personal Perspective
1987 Until the Morning After: Collected Poems (poetry)
1990 Ghana: A Political History from Pre-European to Modern Times
1992 Comes the Voyager at Last: A Tale of Return to Africa (novel)
1992 The Latin American and Caribbean Notebook (poetry)
1994 Africa, the Marginalized Continent
2002 Herding the Lost Lamb (poetry)
2006 The African Predicament: Collected Essays
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More in: Archive A-B, In Memoriam