Osborne Henry Kwesi Brew (27 May 1928 – 30 July 2007) [1] was a Ghanaian poet and diplomat. [2]
Brew was born in Cape Coast, Ghana, to a Fante family in 1928. He was brought up by a British guardian—education officer, K. J. Dickens [3] —after his parents died.
He was one of the first graduates from the University College of the Gold Coast in 1951. While still a student, Brew participated in college literary activities and experimented with prose, poetry, and drama. After graduation he won a British Council poetry competition in Accra, and his poems appeared in the Ghanaian literary journal Okyeame, as well as several important African anthologies. Shadows of Laughter (1968), a collection of his best early poems, reveals a thematic interest unusual for a Ghanaian poet: the value of the individual compared with that of society as a whole. In poems such as "The Executioner's Dream", which views with something like horror some of the rituals of traditional Ghanaian society, he suggests that society, in an attempt to purge itself of the ills of life, robs the individual of dignity. African Panorama and Other Poems (1981) draws upon the sights and sounds of rural and urban Ghana. In his collection Return of No Return (1995), he pays tribute to the American writer Maya Angelou and to Ghanaians who may have helped reshape his Eurocentric views into Afrocentric ones.
Brew was published in Okyeame , and four of his poems were included in the 1958 anthology Voices of Ghana . [4] His first published collection, The Shadows of Laughter (1968), was divided into five thematic sections: "Passing Souls" (on death); "Today, We Look at Each Other"; "The Moment of Our Life" (nature); "A Plea for Mercy" (the supernatural); and "Questions of Our Time". [4] His poetry has been characterized as "the poetry of statement and situation". [5]
Kofi Awoonor was a Ghanaian poet, author and diplomat. His work combined the poetic traditions of his native Ewe people with contemporary and religious symbolism to depict Africa during decolonization. He started writing under the name George Awoonor-Williams, and was also published as Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor. He taught African literature at the University of Ghana. Professor Awoonor was among those who were killed in the September 2013 attack at Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was a participant at the Storymoja Hay Festival.
Linton Kwesi Johnson OD, also known as LKJ, is a Jamaica-born, British-based dub poet and activist. In 2002, he became the second living poet, and the only black one, to be published in the Penguin Modern Classics series. His performance poetry involves the recitation of his own verse in Jamaican patois over dub-reggae, usually written in collaboration with reggae producer/artist Dennis Bovell.
Ama Ata Aidoo was a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, politician, and academic. She was Secretary for Education in Ghana from 1982 to 1983 under Jerry Rawlings's PNDC administration. Her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, was published in 1965, making Aidoo the first published female African dramatist. As a novelist, she won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1992 with the novel Changes. In 2000, she established the Mbaasem Foundation in Accra to promote and support the work of African women writers.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite, CHB, was a Barbadian poet and academic, widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. Formerly a professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite was the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses.
Nii Ayikwei Parkes, born in the United Kingdom to parents from Ghana, where he was raised, is a performance poet, writer, publisher and sociocultural commentator. He is one of 39 writers aged under 40 from sub-Saharan Africa who in April 2014 were named as part of the Hay Festival's prestigious Africa39 project. He writes for children under the name K.P. Kojo.
Efua Theodora Sutherland was a Ghanaian playwright, director, dramatist, children's author, poet, educationalist, researcher, child advocate, and cultural activist. Her works include the plays Foriwa (1962), Edufa (1967), and The Marriage of Anansewa (1975). She founded the Ghana Drama Studio, the Ghana Society of Writers, the Ghana Experimental Theatre, and a community project called the Kodzidan. As Ghana's earliest playwright-director, she was an influential figure in the development of modern Ghanaian theatre, and helped to introduce the study of African performance traditions at university level. She was also a pioneering African publisher, establishing the company Afram Publications in Accra in the 1970s.
Kofi Anyidoho is a Ghanaian poet and academic who comes from a family tradition of Ewe poets and oral artists. He is currently Professor of Literature at the University of Ghana.
Okyeame was a literary magazine founded by the Ghana Society of Writers in the post-Independence era, which saw the rapid rise of a new generation of thinkers, writers and poets in the country. The first issue of Okyeame appeared in 1960, and issues were published, at irregular intervals, up until 1972. Inspired by Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister of Ghana, the publication sought to explore the experiences of Africa from a new intellectual framework. Writers published in the magazine include its first editor Kofi Awoonor, Efua Sutherland, Ayi Kwei Armah and Ama Ata Aidoo.
Frank Kobina Parkes was a Ghanaian journalist, broadcaster and poet. He was the author of one book, Songs from the Wilderness, but is widely anthologised and is perhaps best known for his poem "African Heaven", which echoes the title of Carl Van Vechten's controversial 1926 novel Nigger Heaven, and was selected by Langston Hughes for inclusion in the groundbreaking anthology of African writing An African Treasury (1960). Parkes' poetic style, an intelligent, rhythmic free verse brimming with confidence and undercut with humour, is believed to owe much to the Senegalese poet David Diop, one of the pioneers of the négritude movement. Reviewing Songs from the Wilderness, Mbella Sonne Dipoko said: "Mr Parkes is one of the fine poets writing today about Africa and the world." The book was hailed as "...a landmark not only in Ghanaian poetry but in African poetry as a whole".
Voices of Ghana: Literary Contributions to the Ghana Broadcasting System 1955–57 was "the first Ghanaian literary anthology of poems, stories, plays and essays". Edited by Henry Swanzy and published in 1958 by the Ghanaian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Voices of Ghana contained works that had been broadcast on the Ghana radio programmes The Singing Net, Sound Judgement and Akan Theatre between 1955 and 1957. The collection opened with an essay, "The Poetry of Drums", by Kwabena Nketia, and the writers anthologised included Frank Parkes, A. W. Kayper-Mensah, Kwesi Brew, Cameron Duodu, Amu Djoleto, Efua T. Sutherland Robert K. Gardiner and Geormbeeyi Adali-Mortty. According to Nigerian writer Cyprian Ekwensi, the anthology was Ghana's declaration of its "literary achievement" and was "bound to lead to intense literary awakening throughout the coast".
Martin Cameron Duodu is a United Kingdom-based Ghanaian novelist, journalist, editor and broadcaster. After publishing a novel, The Gab Boys, in 1967, Duodu went on to a career as a journalist and editorialist.
Neville Dawes was a novelist and poet born in Nigeria of Jamaican parentage. He was the father of poet and editor Kwame Dawes.
Atukwei John Okai was a Ghanaian poet, cultural activist and academic. He was Secretary-General of the Pan African Writers' Association, and a president of the Ghana Association of Writers. His early work was published under the name John Okai. With his poems rooted in the oral tradition, he is generally acknowledged to have been the first real performance poet to emerge from Africa, and his work has been called "also politically radical and socially conscious, one of his great concerns being Pan-Africanism". His performances on radio and television worldwide include an acclaimed 1975 appearance at Poetry International at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, where he shared the stage with US poets Stanley Kunitz and Robert Lowell, and Nicolás Guillén of Cuba.
Abena Pokua Adompim Busia is a Ghanaian writer, poet, feminist, lecturer and diplomat. She is a daughter of the former prime minister of Ghana, Kofi Abrefa Busia, and is the sister of actress Akosua Busia. Busia is an associate professor of Literature in English, and of women's and gender studies at Rutgers University. She is Ghana's ambassador to Brazil, appointed in 2017, with accreditation to the other 12 republics of South America.
Nii Kwate Owoo is a Ghanaian academic and filmmaker, described by Variety as "one of the first Ghanaians to lense in 35mm". His name has also appeared in film credits as Kwate Nee-Owoo.
Kwesi Yankah is a Ghanaian academic, author, and university administrator. He is a professor of linguistics and oral literature specializing in the ethnography of communications. He has served as the Pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Ghana and the president of the Central University. The author of several books, he was inducted as a fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999. He is currently the Ghanaian Minister of State in charge of tertiary education.
Lalage Jean Bown was an English educator, feminist and women's literacy advocate.
Ellis Ayitey Komey was a Ghanaian writer and poet.
William Du Bois Yaw Sakyi Kumi, popularly known as Koo Kumi, is a Ghanaian spoken word artist, photographer, slam poet and mixed media visual artist. He is known for his blend of Twi and English languages. He adopts a traditional sound as well as an alternative hip hop feel. He appeared on the literary scene in 2012.
Dannabang Kuwabong is a Ghanaian Canadian. He is an author, poet and professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture. He was born in Nanville in the Upper West Region of Ghana. He has written many anthologies and edited academic journals.