For Kofi Awoonor

I was devastated as I watched the breaking news on CNN. It was the news on the attack on Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. “Another terrorist attack!” I cried. What came to my mind immediately was the pain and grief that would overwhelm the families of those who lost their lives. It was later on that news started filtering in that the great Ghanaian poet, Kofi Awoonor, was killed in the attack. Gosh! Another creative mind gone just like that!

I first encountered the works of Awoonor in my literature class in high school. His poem ‘Song of Sorrow’ was part of the WAEC syllabus that year. The following opening lines of the poem still stay in my memory till date:

 Dzoghese 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.

His poems evoke the traditional dirges of his southern Ewe-speaking Anlo people of Ghana. His first major writings were a translation from the original Ewe into English of the songs of the famous Anlo poet and lyricist Akpaloo. His works show that he is an urbane and sophisticated Renaissance man who called and regarded as his friends people from every tribe and nationality around the world.

Likewise, his novel This Earth, My Brother is set in Ghana, and it echoes many of the fanatical themes of his poems. In This Earth, My Brother, Awoonor tells of the pain of voluntary exile and his spiritual return to his native land, Ghana.

The story in the narrative is told by the author on two levels. Each depicts a distinct reality. The first level details a day in the life of an attorney named Amamu. On another level, it is full of symbolism, of a mystical journey filled with biblical and literary allusions. These allusions tell of the then new nation of Ghana, represented by a baby on a dunghill. The dunghill is a source of both rot and renewal, a representation of the foundations upon which Ghana was built.

I find Awoonor’s poems very musical, and like Niyi Osundare, he is a nature poet who never ceased to talk about the earth in his poems. It is really sad that such a citadel of knowledge would be gunned down by some selfish and irrational beings. Adieu, Kofi Awoonor.

By: FUNKE OSAE-BROWN