I. Tribute to Professor Kofi Nyiᶑeʋu Awoonor: The Hippo Turned our Cannon by Edzordzi Agbozo-Hero (#RIPAwoonor)

The death of Ghanaian novelist, poet, politician, and academic Kofi Awoonor in the Kenya Westgate terrorist attack by al-shabab is no longer news. Several news outlets have talked about this eminent Ghanaian poet.

ImageNations is offering a platform for those who want one to share poems of tribute to Kofi Awoonor. Edzordzi Agbozo-Hero begins this series with The Hippo Turned our Cannon. This series will run as long as there are submissions.

The Hippo Turned our Cannon
Nyiᶑeʋu meᶑea keʋu o

The hippo does not overturn
The canoe with sandload

Nyiᶑewu meᶑea keʋu o

This hippo overturned it
This hippo overturned it

We are the snake
Whose head Al-Shabab caught
We only wag our tails defenceless
The hippo overturned our canoe
But never it’s content
For the sand is too light to sink
Your voice, too loud to sink

In this corner of our common fate
Fire in a neighbour’s farm
Consumes all farm-huts
A dirge from a distant drum
Splits the tear-bag in our brains
The blast of toy-guns
Mould fireballs, dispersed across all souls

Indeed, yours is a great journey
So let not the children mourn
The transition of a pathfinder
And his voice, the path-adder

Rather
Let monuments rise
Lift up the anthems
Sound is mother to words

And let the great ancestor
March on into eternity
To remain
Eternal father of modern Ghanaian poetry

Nyiᶑeʋu meᶑea keʋu o

The hippo does not overturn
The canoe with sandload

Nyiᶑeʋu meᶑea keʋu o

21/09/2013
Trondheim-Norway

Comments

  1. Reading Pleasure24 September 2013 at 17:42

    A beautiful and powerful tribute, Edzordzi. Indeed, Awonoor's powerful voice cries on, in our hearts!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Help Improve the Blog with a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10. Unexpected Joy at Dawn: My Reading

Image
Title: Unexpected Joy At Dawn Author: Alex Agyei-Agyiri Genre: Novel Publisher: Sub-Saharan Publishers Pages: 331 Year: 2004 Country: Ghana Unexpected Joy at Dawn is a story of two siblings, Nii and Mama Orojo, during the 1983 deportation of Ghanaians from Nigeria under the Shehu Shagari government. Nii, who is a Nigerian by blood but a Ghanaian by birth, was left in Ghana by his parents as they made the tortuous journey to Nigeria when Ghana enacted the Aliens Compliance Order of 1969, which made every person living in Ghana without the required papers an alien. His name was changed to reflect the name of his adopted parents. After fourteen years of living in hardship in Ghana, which involves living in slums even though he was an Assistant Manager at a bank, taking on multiple jobs, not being able to bury a wife and being chased around by market women for purported 'fraud', he decided to go to Nigeria in search of his roots. Besides, he entertained the fears of being...
Read more

69. The Clothes of Nakedness by Benjamin Kwakye, A Review

Image
Title: The Clothes of Nakedness Author: Benjamin Kwakye Publishers: Heinemann African Writers Series Genre: Fiction/Novel/Class Pages: 212 Year of First Publication: 1998 Country: Ghana For the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa Region Winners Reading Challenge Benjamin Kwakye 's novel The Clothes of Nakedness  is a compelling narrative directed at a Ghanaian audience, in particular. It reveals the economic hardships existing in our society; it also reveals the intricately woven relationships between the rich and the poor and how the 'seemingly' rich manipulate the poor to further that wealth-dom in this dual economic society where absolute riches exist side by side with abject poverty. The latter scenario is even more stark and pathetic if one knows that Nima and Kanda Estates, two neighbourhoods presented in the story, are real and not just fictional representation made concrete by Kwakye's brilliant mind. The story revolves around thr...
Read more

42. The Blinkards by Kobina Sekyi

Image
Title: The Blinkards, A Comedy and The Anglo-Fanti - A Short Story Author: Kobina Sekyi Genre: Play/Short Story Pages: 256 Publishers: Heinemann/Readwide ISBN: 978-0-435-92784-4 Year of Publication: 1974 (this edition, 1997) Country: Gold Coast (Now Ghana) Setting:  This book contains two stories: The Blinkards - a play and The Anglo-Fanti - a short story . Though the stories are from two different genres, one theme threads through them: the effect of absolute cultural osmosis or better still the consequences of swallowing an alien culture without much scrutiny, as happened in occupied countries popularly referred to by the occupiers as colonies (colonies of what? Ants? Bees?) Both stories took place in Cape Coast and the setting is very significant to the story. Apart from the author being a Fanti from Cape Coast, Cape Coast was the first point of introduction to colonial rule. As a seaport city, it was the first town that was brought under colonial rule; hence ...
Read more