During a poetry masterclass at the Storymoja Hay Festival he was attending in Kenya, he discussed mortality and said he was unafraid of death. Death did go to him; and what a way for such a great man to die.
The Rawlings Revolution
For someone who was at the University of Ghana, Legon, during the early years of the Jerry Rawlings revolution, Awoonor meant a lot more than a poet and novelist. He was in insider.
For someone who was at the University of Ghana, Legon, during the early years of the Jerry Rawlings revolution, Awoonor meant a lot more than a poet and novelist. He was in insider.
He explained it himself in an interview with the National Mirror: “I have a feeling that for the first time the Rawlings phenomenon –I use the word phenomenon advisedly– was a rebellion phenomenon. That is a rebellion which had fairly intelligent justification because we were taking a risk after we had adopted the so-called democratic parliamentary system since 1959. That was the last round after the overthrow of (Kwame) Nkrumah. So, 10 years after, Rawlings staged a coup d’état that was short-lived, three months and then election was organised and politicians came back again.
“Within two and half years Rawlings came back with the support of many of us from the universities, the lecturers, the writers; the academic community as a whole.
Not 100 percent but at least, those of us who had been active on the left. The post Nkrumah remnant, most of us who considered ourselves the pan-African children of Nkrumah socialist ideas supported Rawlings and we worked with him for 10 years, 1982 to 1992.
“The first ingredient was the reconstruction of the base government at the local government, we divided the country into new districts and now we have about 175 districts made up of 500,000 people where you can give them a mini parliament where they elect people…..
“In 1992 political parties were allowed to f o r m. We formed the party called the National Democratic Congress, NDC, which won power twice. We lost to John Kufour in 2000, who stayed for eight years and we won in 2008 with John Atta Mills, who passed away and (John) Mahama took over.”
Change of Name
Surprisingly, there aren’t much of Awoonor’s interviews on his writing on the Internet. Surprising! From the little info available he did explain what happened to the Williams in his name. Many of his early readers knew him as George Awoonor-Williams, and it wasn’t a pseudonym.
Surprisingly, there aren’t much of Awoonor’s interviews on his writing on the Internet. Surprising! From the little info available he did explain what happened to the Williams in his name. Many of his early readers knew him as George Awoonor-Williams, and it wasn’t a pseudonym.
He said: “That’s not my pen name really, that’s my family name. I come from Wheta, next door to Togo. We were very early Anglicised in that area of the country. My great great grandfather was a member of the people who gave land to the Presbyterians and Christianity became endemic.
“So, this was a family name but I chopped off all the Christian names for the purposes of sheer convenience. And I am a self-confessed Africanist and I don’t feel right to go around with all these ‘Anglo-Saxonist’ tags.”
“So, this was a family name but I chopped off all the Christian names for the purposes of sheer convenience. And I am a self-confessed Africanist and I don’t feel right to go around with all these ‘Anglo-Saxonist’ tags.”
Nigerian Writers
Awooner knew his contemporary writers from Nigeria very well. He said of them: “I knew Christohper Okigbo very well, he was a fantastic chap. I think we first met in 1952 in Kampala (Uganda). Chinua (Achebe) was there too. He had just published Things Fall Apart. J.P. Clarke was there as well, so was the man who wrote People of the City, Cyprian Ekwensi and Ngugi (wa Thiongu), who was still an undergraduate at Makerere University when he joined us for the conference carrying his manuscript of Weep not Child all over the place. What was also exciting was the presence of Langston Hughes, who came from the Diaspora.
Awooner knew his contemporary writers from Nigeria very well. He said of them: “I knew Christohper Okigbo very well, he was a fantastic chap. I think we first met in 1952 in Kampala (Uganda). Chinua (Achebe) was there too. He had just published Things Fall Apart. J.P. Clarke was there as well, so was the man who wrote People of the City, Cyprian Ekwensi and Ngugi (wa Thiongu), who was still an undergraduate at Makerere University when he joined us for the conference carrying his manuscript of Weep not Child all over the place. What was also exciting was the presence of Langston Hughes, who came from the Diaspora.
“It was there that we would attempt – I use the word advisedly – to describe or define what African literature is. Resolving the whole debate of whether we, who write in these colonial languages, can actually claim any authenticity to be real Africans. The debate has matured over many decades drawing the conclusion that European languages that came into Africa came to colonise and then we took them over by force of history, we needed to use them.
“The guys who gave articulation to this brilliantly are Chinua Achebe and to a very large extent, Christopher Okigbo. In Okigbo’s hands, the English language acquired its own classical resonance from where he was coming from. And of course, Achebe’s classics, to me, he only wrote two books, Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God.
“The rest are monologues, dialogues sometimes of all kinds of contemporary discourse. I think Arrow of God is his best book because it generates a discourse, a debate. Things Fall Apart is too flat, it is a single directional proposition.
“The stylistics is incredible however, and I see so many people trying to imitate him over the years, but they can’t. He had mastered the English language and many people don’t know that Achebe was a master of the English language.
“The stylistics is incredible however, and I see so many people trying to imitate him over the years, but they can’t. He had mastered the English language and many people don’t know that Achebe was a master of the English language.
“He knows the English language inside out, that is why he can use it, and he can turn it around, as Caesar said, as a miraculous weapon against his naïve conquerors. Christopher on the other h a n d didn’t produce much. He has, I think, one single slim volume then a few things scattered all over.
“But the work that he did became a composition of both the linguistic and artistic cultural rostrum on which educated Africans were taught.”
If Awooner didn’t talk much about himself, others did for him. One of such rich sources is the Gale Contemporary Black Biography:
If Awooner didn’t talk much about himself, others did for him. One of such rich sources is the Gale Contemporary Black Biography:
Life’s Work
One of modern West Africa’s best-known writers, the Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor integrated ancient African forms of expression with the techniques of modern poetry. The resulting body of work formed a unique poetic chronicle of West African life in the late twentieth century, encompassing both the effects of European colonialism and the influence Africa exerted on other cultures around the world. Closely aligned with the preeminent leader of modern Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, Awoonor suffered imprisonment for his political beliefs but emerged as an important political figure himself in later life.
One of modern West Africa’s best-known writers, the Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor integrated ancient African forms of expression with the techniques of modern poetry. The resulting body of work formed a unique poetic chronicle of West African life in the late twentieth century, encompassing both the effects of European colonialism and the influence Africa exerted on other cultures around the world. Closely aligned with the preeminent leader of modern Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, Awoonor suffered imprisonment for his political beliefs but emerged as an important political figure himself in later life.
Influenced by African Heritage
The son of a tailor and the grandson of a woman who was a traditional singer of dirges or songs of lament in the Ewe culture, Kofi Awoonor was born in his grandfather’s house in Wheta, Ghana, on March 13, 1935....Awoonor’s family was poor, but when he was nine years old he was sent away from his family to attend school; he earned a place to live by working as a servant for a wealthy family. Financing his whole education in the same way, Awoonor was able to attend the University of Ghana in the country’s capital of Accra. He graduated in 1960 and continued to teach at the university and to write. His first book of poetry, Rediscovery and Other Poems, was published in Nigeria in 1964.
The son of a tailor and the grandson of a woman who was a traditional singer of dirges or songs of lament in the Ewe culture, Kofi Awoonor was born in his grandfather’s house in Wheta, Ghana, on March 13, 1935....Awoonor’s family was poor, but when he was nine years old he was sent away from his family to attend school; he earned a place to live by working as a servant for a wealthy family. Financing his whole education in the same way, Awoonor was able to attend the University of Ghana in the country’s capital of Accra. He graduated in 1960 and continued to teach at the university and to write. His first book of poetry, Rediscovery and Other Poems, was published in Nigeria in 1964.
During this period Awoonor became allied with the charismatic Nkrumah, a symbol of the aspirations of West Africa’s newly independent countries and of African cultural pride in general. That led in 1964 to a job in Accra with Ghana’s Ministry of Information, but after Nkrumah’s government was overturned in a coup d’état Awoonor left the country. He landed for a year at the University of London, and in 1968 he came to the United States and enrolled at the State University of Stony Brook, on New York state’s Long Island.
Experimental Novel
Earning an M.A. and later (in 1973) a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Stony Brook, Awoonor both deepened his poetry and began to gain wider recognition for it. His first book of poetry was reissued, with added material, by Doubleday publishing house as Night of My Blood in 1971. He also wrote plays and an experimental novel called This Earth, My Brother.
Earning an M.A. and later (in 1973) a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Stony Brook, Awoonor both deepened his poetry and began to gain wider recognition for it. His first book of poetry was reissued, with added material, by Doubleday publishing house as Night of My Blood in 1971. He also wrote plays and an experimental novel called This Earth, My Brother.
The collection of poems Awoonor had submitted as his Ph.D. dissertation was published as The Breast of the Earth in 1975. By that time Awoonor had become professor and chair of the department of comparative literature at SUNY Stony Brook. That year, the poet took a one-year sabbatical leave to return home to Ghana, intending to teach at the country’s Cape Coast University. But the trip had disastrous results--he was thrown in prison on charges of harbouring a subversive on December 31, 1975, amid rumors of a possible coup. Despite heavy international pressure organized largely by Awoonor’s U.S. colleagues, he was held for a year with little contact with the outside world.
Wrote Poetry While in Prison
Awoonor continued to write while in Ghana’s Ussher Fort prison, and his work of this period was published in 1978 as The House By the Sea. These poems marked a new and more political direction in Awoonor’s work. Unsurprisingly his life after his release from prison in 1976 became more and more entwined with the politics and government of his homeland. Awoonor taught at Cape Coast University from 1977 to 1982, but then embarked upon a period of service to the Ghanaian government in various capacities.
Awoonor continued to write while in Ghana’s Ussher Fort prison, and his work of this period was published in 1978 as The House By the Sea. These poems marked a new and more political direction in Awoonor’s work. Unsurprisingly his life after his release from prison in 1976 became more and more entwined with the politics and government of his homeland. Awoonor taught at Cape Coast University from 1977 to 1982, but then embarked upon a period of service to the Ghanaian government in various capacities.
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