Scarecrow - Darko Antwi

We went to see
For ourselves

There was no ghost
Only slamming doors
And flapping curtains

There was no fear

It had vanished
Like the ghost

There was no ghost
No fear -

Only some angry harmattan wind
Knocking things about
Like a wounded lion

Author Profile - Darko Antwi

Biography:

Darko Antwi was born in Ashanti New Town, Kumasi, in May 1976 to Kwaku Antwi and Elizabeth Donkor. After his secondary education at Bekwai Seventh Day Adventist, Antwi taught in local kindergarten and primary schools for five years.

In September 2002 he traveled to the United Kingdom. During his stay in England, he was occupied by a string of odd jobs, including the position of a factory labourer, fabric launderer and newspaper columnist.

Antwi is the proprietor of Seaweed Books, publishers of Phillis Wheatley Chapter and organizers of both the Ahenkro Book Fair and the Miss Akoto Book Club. He also serves as a Contributing Editor with One Ghana One Voice.

Five Questions with Darko Antwi:

1. With "Scarecrow" you have joined the long list of OGOV poets writing about the harmattan. That said, do you consider this poem to be "about" the harmattan, or is the harmattan simply a feature of it?

Standing by the title, the speaker is reporting the aftermath of a frightening moment. Reducing it to characters, it is as well about the natural stunt of Harmattan: the wrath of one violent tropical condition. When ground and sieved, Harmattan would come to surface. All put together, it could be related to the need to go into the deep to uproot and discard every form of fear, visible or invisible: fear of heights, fear of darkness, fear of pregnancy, fear of the future, fear of cancer, fear of people and so on.


2. Have you written many poems about the harmattan? Is it a subject you're interested in writing about, generally, or was this a rare appearance of it in your work?

'Harmattan Shall Flee' is one of my earliest poems. That was written in the 1990s. A street typist around the walls of Kumasi Central Post Office got it organised on an official paper, costing me something less than ₵500 (5GHp). I wanted it published. I tried Daily Graphic and a couple of national newspapers eventually. None of them published nor replied. Probably it was not worthy. Maybe it failed largely on evidence that those papers hadn’t any column for poetry by then.

Since that disappointing attempt, I didn’t write anything about the subject until ‘Scarecrow’ came to mind in 2004.


3. "Scarecrow" is a very haunting poem. I wonder what inspired you to write it - a line? An image? An idea?

In 1988, my family was two years into a new home it had moved in to from Ashanti New Town. Everything was going well. New buildings were being put up on the bushy plots closest to ours. The neighbourhood population was growing. The second of my three brothers was born. That same year, I started secondary school at age twelve. The only bad news was the death of my beloved uncle, the 23-year old Akwasi Gyamfi - a sufferer of sickle cell disease.

One early morning, within the first week of Akwasi’s death, I was sent into his room to pick an item. Already, I had developed a fear for darkness. At night, I couldn’t stay in any of the rooms unaccompanied. This time round, I got scared while it was still day, while attending to the room of my deceased uncle. Some few yards to the door, I heard noises. I panicked. I went back to my grandma reporting the ghost I thought I heard. "Ghosts are not real," she responded in disbelief. But I remained quiet and wouldn’t move. She rebuked me saying: "Come on… let’s go in there… show me that your mother or father who has turned into a ghost."

So terrified and humiliated, I followed her into the room. The rest of the story are in the lines of "Scarecrow".


4. You have always been a leading critic and commentator on Ghanaian poetry. How do you find the state of the Ghanaian poetry scene now, compared to five years ago?

Five years ago, there was so much heat. That was a necessary energy, I think. By then, friendships were formed, errors were made, lessons were learned, and confidence was built. Now, it looks very much relaxed. It is not at all a negative relaxation; because between 2009 and the present, we have witnessed the fruit of the weekly interaction and the author exposure of the OGOV scheme, particularly. Since then several books have been published to the credit of some of the poets who were featured. Though minor, the influence of the period can’t be underestimated. Mariska Taylor-Darko and Elikplim Akorli are among the few whose works should not be taken for granted. I am proud to add that I have recently finished a foreword for Nana Yeboaa’s new book, "On the Banks of the Volta".

Interest for online poetry has gone down partly because the stage is active with regular Spoken Word performances. It's encouraging to note that the desire for attention is getting increasingly competitive. Sticking out my neck, it is my firmest opinion that the Spoken Word movement has rather given a boost to the written form. Nana Asaase, Mutumbo da Poet and others have become household names to the attention of the art they represent. There could be other trivial factors to the decline of online activities. We've got to examine them.


5. Continuing off that last question, where do you see things going in the next five years? Ten years? Are you optimistic about the current trajectory we're on?

We don't have much control over the production of quality titles. Improvement is essential, nevertheless. We are now left with a relationship with the public. Ghanaian poetry has to be discussed by ordinary people. It has to be in the news. We have to befriend the mainstream media. They have to write about poets and poetry. That job should not be the reserve solely of journalists. I am afraid they have little expertise, and little commitment/interest in creative writing. Writers (poets) should volunteer critical and exciting reviews. The papers are not too willing to pay allowances. Let's be ready for a sacrifice. Let's do this with the hope that the demand for poetry will become part of the everyday life of the average Ghanaian. Let's do this with hope that someday in the next five years, publishers will have confidence in Ghanaian poetry. Let's hope that in the next ten years, several poets and some excellent works will get domestic and international recognition. That will go a long way to encourage the next generation.

As of now, we have a bunch of poets who have been inspired to share their works with colleagues. It hasn't gone beyond that. It takes calculated deeds to go beyond this dull practice of poet-to-poet readership. I would love any alternative suggestion for the progress of Ghanaian poetry. If any better deed is put to work, I would have faith. But where there is no such application, other than the current trajectory, optimism would be a farce to uphold. As earnest as attention is needed, Poetry Foundation Ghana and Writers Project of Ghana are doing a lot to publicise and develop talents. Thanks should go to the dedicated teams and visionary leaders behind their operation.

Contact Darko:

darko.antwi@yahoo.co.uk

The Pilgrim Looks Up - Daniel Karasik

Of a book I read last week, on the theme of memory,
I’ve forgotten everything, except for a brief description
of how the narrator, on returning to his Tyrolean childhood home,
was remembered by acquaintances of his early years
for his habit of always,
upon stepping outdoors, looking up
to observe the sky’s condition.

When travelling
I too have often done this.

On the African coast, in harmattan season,
the sky would stay so perpetually hazed
that no amount of looking would make that pilgrim’s art
make sense.

A proud, even a hostile sky,
as I remember it: so utterly unwilling to reveal itself.
For three months I could look at nothing else.

Author Profile - Daniel Karasik

Biography:

Daniel Karasik (b. 1986) is a Toronto-based playwright, poet, fiction writer, and artistic director of indie theatre company Tango Co. His plays have received professional productions across Canada, in the US, and regularly in translation in Germany. He is the author of three books: The Crossing Guard & In Full Light, a volume of plays (Playwrights Canada Press), The Remarkable Flight of Marnie McPhee, a play for children (Playwrights Canada Press), and Hungry, a poetry collection (Cormorant Books). His recent honours include the CBC Literary Award for Fiction, The Malahat Review‘s Jack Hodgins Founders’ Award for Fiction, the Canadian Jewish Playwriting Award, and the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award. His fiction and poetry have appeared in prominent magazines - including The North American Review, Magma, The Fiddlehead, and Air Canada's inflight magazine, EnRoute - in four countries.

Five Questions with Daniel Karasik:

1. The harmattan is such a notable, and unique, feature of West African life. Can you think of any equivalents in Canadian life? In Canadian literature?

Scatological remarks aside? Political blowhards aside? I suppose the northern lights have a kind of mythic status. As does the north, the idea of North. At least that's what my Canadian Literature classes at university told me. But unlike the harmattan, those are phenomena that most Canadians don't encounter very often. They probably have a greater presence in our literature than in the daily consciousness of most people who live in Canada.


2. The last time we interview you, you spoke a bit about your interest in playwriting and the ways in which it overlaps with the writing of poems. You are also a writer of short fiction. Could you speak of the relationship between your writing of poetry and short prose? Which came first for you? Did one fuel or inspire the other? Do you approach the writing of each differently, and if so, how?

Prose came first, though poetry wasn't far behind. I try to be equally conscious and specific and attuned to music and feeling when I write in either form, but otherwise I don't know how to compare them meaningfully. Maybe part of my trouble is that I think it's actually a false opposition, since two prose pieces (say) can be informed by as different motives as a prose piece and a verse piece. Maybe I just don't find the comparison very interesting. OR, maybe I find it so interesting that I'm overwhelmed and sense that I'd need thousands of words to adequately unpack it. One of my favourite writers, Lydia Davis, writes wonderful prose-verse hybrids. She's considered to be a short story writer (and translator from the French), but several of her short pieces have been anthologized in The Best American Poetry volumes. The best of them have an urgency, a precision, an elegance, a supple music, a wisdom, and a deep, unsentimental compassion. Those virtues are what I want, as a reader and a writer. They're what I aim for. At the moment I'm not preoccupied with what form they arrive in, though of course I try to attend to the technical demands of the form they arrive in.


3. You won the 2012 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Short Story prize for your story "Mine", which is quite short. Do you come to very short fiction with a different attitude than you do longer fiction? Is there a shortness at which you think of a short story more as a poem (a prose poem?) and less as a story?

I come to short and long fiction with an identical attitude, because almost all of my fiction - and most of my drama, and some of my verse - starts long and contracts. It's rare that I write a story or novel/novella that doesn't shed at least a third of its original length, and often closer to two-thirds, by the time I consider it "finished" or it's published. Sometimes I suspect I'll never publish a novel of even average length, since everything I write shrinks in the wash so much. To judge by current habits, I'd need to write a first draft the length of Anna Karenina to end up with a novel of maybe 350-400 pages. True to form, the first draft of "Mine," which you mention, was more than three times as long as the version that won the CBC fiction prize. I never feel that brevity of prose turns a story into a poem, though I do sometimes find that radical cuts can give a prose fiction a kind of poetic compression - the language streamlined and intensified, images more crystalline, character actions starker, motives less editorialized.


4. In a recent interview I conducted with you about your first book of poems, Hungry, you mentioned that "music precedes theme when I conceive a poem". I find this idea is true for most of us as children - we love the sound of words, and we love to play with them - but by the time we get old enough to be writing "adult" poetry, many of us have left "sound" behind as the source of our writing. We write first from/for the head, and from/for the ear second or third or not at all. I wonder if you could talk a bit about your journey to that statement of yours - has music always preceded theme for you? And how do you keep it that way, especially when you feel you have a "theme" you really want to talk about?

Music hasn't always preceded theme for me. Sometimes I've been discursive to a fault. I find this balance hard to manage. What I crave is a music that's fused with and carries meaning. Detached from meaning, or without much meaning to bear, music can still give pleasure, and who am I to thumb my nose at pleasure? But it's rare that I get a memorable pleasure from poetry that's just music and wit. Music may precede theme when I write a poem, but it doesn't precede urgency, need, feeling, a vague but insistent sensation that something has to be said. I don't think that's writing "from the head." I think it's writing from the whole person. I want to encounter whole persons in literature, not just body parts (head, ear, heart, etc).


5. What's next for you in your writing life? Any new projects on the horizon?

I'm polishing a novel and a short story collection. Working on a handful of new plays. Trying to surround myself with as many remarkable people as possible, in both my work and my not-work.

Contact Daniel:

daniel_karasik(at)hotmail.com

Baobab Lust - Abdulai Rashad

Huge scanty leafy mountain
the only shade created -
centuries to retain
and firmly rooted
with all grunting strands of braids
seething with a glaring attitude of hugeness
in the forecourt of the
   chief's palace
the baobab's eminence.

Her hair, half braided
some portions seeming plaited.
Beautiful lovely princess.

She was born at the time of the
   fires
beneath the shanty shade of the
   baobab,
her smile amidst the gnawing
   winds.

She can not laugh haphazardly
(her lips warn her).
She can only leap for a smile
with shea butter on her
   lips.

She is seven year of age
her body has been stunted
like the nanism of grasses.
She is the image of a class
that I saw in the magazines.

She is marasmus
she is pale and black
she wears no wear
she leans by the baobab
she wakes upon every dust
and upon the roars of the hungry winds.

The thirsty winds approach
   smile, suck and drain.
Drain bodily fluid and brains
then, the subject's skins tears
after unsentimental affection of the feet
   to the earth.

Wrinkles, cracks and crevices
amidst dryness of earth and skin -
the baobab proclaims
with mastery of the trade winds.

Author Profile - Abdulai Rashad

Biography:

Abdulai Rashad is an environmental health student and a junior member of the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He developed a passion for spoken or recital poetry after he completed secondary school in 1997. At that point he started writing poems. He won an award of poetry recital in Tamale in 2001, in an event organised by the Red Cross. He currently writes poems for himself with hopes of publishing them in the future.

Five Questions with Abdulai:

1. How long have you been writing poetry?

Sometimes I ask myself this same question and always find it difficult to answer. All that I do know about my start of writing poetry and documenting it is that I was about fourteen (14) years. There is no precise time I can tell, for I really started writing poetry the first day I was introduced to writing as a child.


2. Who are your favorite poets? Which poets have most influenced and informed your work?

I get so touched with this because whenever I mention them I feel the desire to write a poem. I get so inspired by these poets for their poetry. So, I mention Prof. Dr. Atukwei Okai, Mutabaruka, Gina Loring and T.S. Eliot.


3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?

I hope to dine and wine the winds of wisdom with kings, noblemen, responsible people on earth no matter where they come from, such that I will be talked about when life becomes lifeless.


4. We are still months away from the Harmattan. What are your feelings on it looking forward.

I was born in November, within the shelves of Harmattan. It is great to have such geographically-unique weather. There will be great feast in some communities as this is the best period to celebrate the best cultural practices in the North.


5. Can you tell us more about the poetry recital in Tamale at which you won an award? What was it like, and how did you become involved.

The program was organised to create awareness on HIV/AIDS but there have not been such activities organised since, to the best of my knowledge. I got involved when my social group was invited, by then I was sort of bumped into it and luckily took the trophy.

Contact Abdulai:

gahinsuma(at)yahoo.co.uk

The Dry Season - Kwesi Brew

The year is withering: the wind
Blows down the leaves;
Men stand under eaves
And overhead the secrets
Of the cold dry wind,
Of the half-bare trees

The grasses are tall and tinted,
Straw gold hues of dryness,
And the contradicting awryness
Of the dusty roads a-scatter
With the peals of colourful leaves,
With ghosts of the dreaming year.

And soon, soon the fires,
The fires will begin to burn,
The hawk will flutter and turn
On its wings and swoop for the mouse,
The dogs will run for the hare,
The hare for its little life.

"The Dry Season" is the sixth, and final, of our series of poems on the Harmattan . The fun isn't over yet, though! Due to the popularity of the series, new poems about the Harmattan will appear sporadically throughout the remainder of 2010, and will be collected here.

Author Profile - Kwesi Brew

Kwesi Brew was one of the finest Ghanaian poets of his generation. He left a permanent mark on the landscape of Ghanaian poetry, and on the country itself - it is sometimes suggested that "The Sea Eats Our Lands" played a role in motivating the government to construct Keta's sea-defense system. He died in 2007, at the age of 79.

In 2008 we concluded our Keta Series with Brew's "The Sea Eats Our Lands". It seemed only fitting to conclude our Harmattan Series with another Brew classic.


From Brew's biography in the Contemporary Africa Database:

Born of a Fante family in central Ghana, Kwesi Brew was brought up after the death of his parents by a British guardian who introduced him to books. After his early education in Ghana, Brew was among the first BA graduates from the University College of the Gold Coast in 1951. Later he served both colonial and independent governments in district commissions, and after independence in diplomatic posts in Europe.

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 an African 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 African life, 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 Africa. 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.

From Brew's obituary in The Guardian:

Kwesi Brew, who has died aged 79, was a Ghanaian public servant and businessman, and one of that talented generation who came to maturity during Ghana's independence 50 years ago.

Born of a Fante family which played a distinguished part in his country's history, he spent part of his youth under the guardianship of a British education officer, KJ Dickens, to whom, he used to say, he "owed everything". He was one of the first generation of undergraduates at the University College of the Gold Coast, where he read English and became known for his acting talents.

On graduation, Brew was recruited into the administrative service - part of the Africanisation programme to replace the British colonial officers - and was successively assistant district commissioner and then district commissioner, mainly working in the Kete Krachi area. He had to make his way among people who were not used to seeing a fellow African in such a post, but was soon warmly welcomed for his affability and lack of pomposity. Among the challenges he had to face was the imminence of the giant Volta Dam, which was to flood some of the Krachi lands.

Brew was recruited to the early Ghanaian diplomatic service and worked in the UK, France, Germany, India and the USSR, before serving as ambassador in Mexico, Lebanon and Senegal.

Later, out of sympathy with the politicians of the time, he left public service and went into business, first joining his younger brother Atu and working as resident director of the Takoradi Flour Mills from 1975-81. He then developed his own company, the Golden Spoon Flour Mills, based in Tema.

Kwesi Brew was in the tradition of writer-diplomats, producing elegant and elegiac verse. His only internationally published collection was The Shadows of Laughter (1968), but he wrote a compassionate poem on the downfall of Kwame Nkrumah. He is survived by his second wife and three daughters.

Wrickken - L.S. Mensah

Three-syllable-wind
Disinherited of moisture,
Bespoke and befitting
For the dispossessed,
Dear spirit-child-of-sand!

Who was it carved up the world’s winds,
Assigned you to me, as if to inject my parts,
With ampoules of your absent wetness?
Who was it bequeathed you this loom,
To weave a million ballads of dryness?

Some deficiency must bend your needle
Northeast; where, knuckled into the year’s
Headwinds, gargoyles greet your passing.
Great-great-godfather-of-the-sahel, yours,
Is a problem with rickets.

Long ago astrologers of meteorology,
Foretold the coming of a Sand Messiah,
Downwind of the wind gradient,
A desert dervish, come to tap
Dance with the wind.

And for this I waited; watching
The dandruff moult in the sun-brushed
Twigs of women’s braids.
I bore witness, as you, genuflecting,
Ripped humidity from its hinge.

And what did I gain but a squint,
Sat squat on the trig point of my vision?
Still, even devoid of moisture, you carry
Cadences of water in your double helix.
Or dare I say helices? And dare I say,

One day, just like that, at the break
Of the libationer's prayer
Whatever phlegm of water you gorged;
Would rise, to reign, then fall,
As nayabinghi rain:

De dum.
De dum.
De dum.
De dum.
De dum.

So sleep well. You, on your vowelled
Pillows. I too, shall snore well.
A parting note:
If we should meet in the damp dew, you’ll know,
By the way my skin crackles with drought-static.

"Wrickken" is the fifth of our series of poems on the Harmattan. New entries will be posted each week, and collected here.

Author Profile - L.S. Mensah

Biography:

L. S. Mensah was born and raised in Accra, and has been living in the UK for the past few years. Recently her work has appeared in the annual Barnet Poetry Anthology, Akwantuo.org and Sentinel Poetry’s Champion Poems.

Five Questions with L. S. Mensah:

1. As a child, what was your reaction to the coming of the Harmattan? Has that changed now that you are an adult?

With a sense of dread really. One could sense its approach as the air becomes drier. I think the economic situation also had a lot to do with it, since the price of shea butter suddenly skyrockets. Suddenly shea butter sellers become the common enemy, and we're allowed to moan. As an adult, I look at it as just another weather phenomenon.


2. Living outside of Ghana now, do you miss the Harmattan season at all? And how does it compare to winter in the UK?

I do miss it around this time of year since it's at its height between December and February, which roughly coincides with Winter. In Ga the word for the Harmattan 'Aharabata' is the same as that for the month of January.

It is important not to over fetishize or romanticize it since it causes real discomfort. Some people's skins do really crack, especially around the heel, and bleeding lips are common, not to mention those with asthma and other breathing problems. There is even scientific evidence to suggest it leads to an increase in cerebrospinal meningitis (CSM) across the sub region. In Mali, CSM is known locally as 'the wind illness'. This being Africa a few hundred children die from this disease around this time.


3. In the past, did the Harmattan affect your writing? Would you write less or more during the Harmattan season? Would the themes or tones of your poems change?

I wouldn't say it affected my writing very much; I suppose its presence enabled me to be philosophical about it. I think I have a few poems on the Harmattan, and I'm beginning to look at them as a sequence.


4. Your attention to detail, and to using the right words in the right places, is a great lesson to new Ghanaian writers of how a good poet is a craftsman (or craftswoman!). A question about craft then: when you are choosing your words for such lovely lines as "To weave a million ballads of dryness" and "You, on your vowelled / Pillows" how much of your concern is to literal meaning, how much to image, and how much to sound? What balance are you trying to strike?

Thanks a million for the compliment!

With this poem I started with the literal meaning, from the dictionary definition (and that's a possible way into a poem). You see the word 'Wrickken', is itself an old English word for rickets. 'Harmattan' the dictionary says, is of Akan origin, and dates back to around the 17th century. It is possible the word was absorbed into English, not long after the Europeans became heavily involved in trade with Africans. For me then, the poem draws on metaphors of deformity and timelessness.

The detail comes with the rewrites, when I start to reshape my material. I arrived at the line “To weave a million ballads of dryness” through a moment of serendipity really. I'd heard Marina Lewycka ("A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian"), on the radio, refer to the success rate for new writers as 'a ballad of failure' and then took it from there. For me, that line functions as a crutch. Since I tend to write (overly) long poems, I often look for a phrase or a line which can hold the poem up in places (sort of like Atlas), and allow my reader to pause for breathe, and then continue. I trust my reader to, at some other time, return and investigate the line, and by extension the whole poem again.

As for the phrase "You, on your vowelled / Pillows" it was an attempt to tease out a metalinguistic strain and tease out other meanings from that, but went no further with that. At some point one has to pull back and allow the reader to do the rest. By the time one has made decisions about where to break the line, which point of view to adopt, imagery, metaphor, assonance etc. the poem would have settled and found its own internal balance.


5. How many revisions did this poem go through before its present state? Is that number average, high or low for you?

This must be about the 9th or 10th revision, which is average really. I'm a bit finicky and as soon as I tell myself I'm done with a poem, I go back and start making changes to it. The way I approach it is to copy and paste the last draft, save it with the date, or write by hand in a notebook, also dated. That takes a little more time, but helps me think as I write. The danger with the rewrite is that it could bleed the poem of all vitality. But this way I can go back anytime if I lose my way.

I'll end with what William Herbert says in the essay 'Creative Space':

"Revision is the point at which you stop talking to yourself and start relating to your audience. Until you revise, you are just hanging around in creative space. Revision is the means by which you manoeuvre.

This is the pencil-thin line that a writer must turn into a thoroughfare: you journey into the hitherto unimagined for no other reason than you want to, and you must bring the reader along because you've made them think that they want to as well."

Contact L. S.:

nomadafricanus(at)yahoo.co.uk

Bleeding Call - Nana Agyemang Ofosu

Tell the winds of the south
To blow up north
To replace the winds of the desert
For the hot dry winds have drunk
The waters of my fields

Tell the heroes and warriors of the west
To come to the east
To save my children
Who are drowned by the greed of my first borns

Tell they who take from my pouch
That my children need to sleep on a couch
For their backs have ached for long
For years have they tilled the land
And yet bare on the floor they sleep

Tell those wise sons and daughters of mine
That I do miss them; and I do lay for them a wreathe
To those returning send message
That the old mother is dying from rot

And now to those who are here
Let the winds be still
And peace inundate our barrels
I see in the hourglass distant good tidings
Booming and waiting to be tapped
When my coast is cleared of debris.

"Bleeding Call" is the fourth of our series of poems on the Harmattan. New entries will be posted each week, and collected here.

Author Profile - Nana Agyemang Ofosu

Biography:

Nana Agyemang Ofosu, born on February 3rd, 1985 in Kumasi, Ghana, is a young poet. He holds a degree in civil engineering from Kwame Nkrumah University of science and technology and is currently honoring his national service at the Department of Urban Roads, Kumasi. As a student of science, he accidentally discovered his interest in poetry when he made a bad comment about a poetry piece of his younger brother. He is a member of an open mic poetry team in Kumasi and also a founding member of Unified Talents, the organizers of Open Mic Poetry.

Five Questions with Nana Agyemang Ofosu:

1. The Harmattan was brief this year. How did you feel about this?

The harmattan this year was unfriendly because it did not last long. It only gave me the impression that nature has changed. I now know that the climate change has hit my country and who ever is involved in such an act to destroy nature should be called to order.


2. When you were a child, how did you feel about the Harmattan? Have those feelings changed as you've aged?

As a young boy the harmattan only bathed me in white pale skin as I played in the sand. The Harmattan made it hard to breathe as we approached December and journeyed through to January to February. My early years as a child saw the beauty of the Harmattan when the climax was a beautiful windstorm gathering everything it found. The Harmattan season was a delight since it introduced a whole experience of life i had to adjust to.

But now there is a sudden change; the season of Harmattan has been shortened with no extraordinary effects. What is to come due to this change is only left to God.


3. In the past, has the Harmattan affected your writing? Have you written less or more during the Harmattan season? Have the themes or tones of your poems changed?

Though I have not specifically written something on Harmattan, I have made an effort to relate some of the things I write to it. I am not aware of the times when I write more often. How I write depends on how I feel about a situation and my emotions.


4. The title of this poem is an interesting one. Could you talk about it a bit?

Well, the title is about a mother who is calling her sons and those who can offer help to her in her difficult times. Clearly stated in the opening opening stanza, a call has been made to the winds of the south to replace that of the north and clearly that is the Harmattan which comes hard to us making the air too dry to breathe. The coming of the south winds brings hope and good tidings.


5. Is there anything new going on in your life/writing that you'd like to share with our readers?

Not much to share with readers. The only truth I want to share is the truth about God.

Contact Nana:

bunitslove(at)yahoo.com, unifiedtalents(at)hotmail.com

Harmattan don come again ooooooh - Mariska Taylor-Darko

Cracked lips
Not good for a kiss

Split heels
Not good for the sheets

Dry skin
Not good for man

Static Hair
Not good for the comb

Dry white dust
Not good for the houseproud

Icy nostrils
Very good for shea butter

A hot bowl of light soup
Just right for the insides

Harmattan! Na wa ooooh

"Harmattan don come again ooooooh" is the third of our series of poems on the Harmattan. New entries will be posted each week, and collected here.

Author Profile - Mariska Taylor-Darko

Biography:

Born in Manchester, England in 1956, Mariska attended Holy Child Secondary School in Cape Coast and St. Mary's Secondary School, Mamprobi, Accra. She then returned to the UK and attended Beresford College of English and Commerce, Margate, Kent and later Harrow College of Further Education, Harrow, Middlesex. She has a PhD in Life.

She has two sons, Niinoi and Kwame. She is a motivational speaker, poet, writer, beautician, fire walker and lover of jazz, blues, reggae and old time highlife.

Five Questions with Mariska Taylor-Darko:

1. Your wish came true this year and the Harmattan did not come! How do you feel about this?

I missed the Harmattan. I was looking forward to the cool weather after the heat and I think we had one day where it threatened after some heavy rains and we said, "It's coming oooooo." Alas it never happened and it made me realize that climate change was really affecting us.


2. When you were a child, did you have similar feelings about the Harmattan, or have your feelings changed as you've aged?

When I was a child I didn't like it as much as I do now. I hated having shea butter or cocoa butter smeared over me and I had nosebleeds when the dryness came.


3. This is a very playful poem. Is there something about the Harmattan that draws that playfulness out of you?

The sight of people in Ghana, a warm place with an average of 35 degrees, wearing thick winter jackets and cardigans with ashy white lips always made me smile. I called it "Ghanaian Winter." Just the change in people's mannerisms and the Fan Ice sellers trying to convince you that its not harmful to eat frozen yoghurt while the biting wind was going through your bones!


4. What drew you to writing this poem in short-lined couplets? It seems to be a popular style these days amongst Ghanaian writers.

I wrote in short-lined couplet because that is how it came to me.


5. Is there anything new going on in your life/writing that you'd like to share with our readers?

Still looking for a reasonable priced publisher for my three completed books.

Contact Mariska:

Email: mariska.taylor(at)gmail.com
Alternate Email: arabataylord(at)yahoo.co.uk
Websites: African Woman's Poetry, Mariska's MySpace Page

old dust made new - Daniela Elza

the harmattan        (d r y and c o l d)                 came in
couplets—        fine                unrimed                red d us t
 
no matter                how                tightweshutthewindows
you cannot                keep it                                out

b l  u   r    r     e      d                 the trees                the ho us es
the past—                        its long fluorescent lights

thin apparition—                the desert                      came in
sifted down         through                 mosquito nets 

)     t.here is no without        )        no within        the Sahara
breathing        as if it         w e r e          memory       (s l  o    w 
 
and d i f f i c u l t)                arriving on the north east winds
sinking even through the fabric of my                d reams
 
old dust         made new                on our living sur f a c e s
in the morning the black table top                turned    canvas

where my dad left us                secret m e s s a g e s
where                my sister and I awoke         to the wor(l)d

drew                and rhymed                 with child fingertips
before my mom        shined it clean                 for breakfast

"old dust made new" is the second of our series of poems on the Harmattan. New entries will be posted each week, and collected here.

Author Profile - Daniela Elza

Biography:

Daniela Bouneva Elza has lived on three continents and crossed numerous geographic and cultural borders. Writing has been a faithful companion no matter what country or language she found herself in. To date she has released more than 120 poems into the world. She just completed her full length poetry manuscript and is also working toward the completion of her doctorate in Philosophy of Education. She lives with her family in Vancouver and blogs at http://strangeplaces.livingcode.org/

Five Questions with Daniela Elza:

1. What great images you conjure up in "old dust made new"! More generally, though, how did you receive the harmattan each year in Northern Nigeria? With excitement? Relief? Frustration?

It was part of life. People wore hats and scarves in the early mornings. I wore a coat over my short sleeve uniform on the way to school. I was curious about how the haze made the familiar less familiar, the strange halo around the moon at night. The Harmattan was mostly a mystery to me. How it would steal into the house. Every morning a new presence, one that arrived from far away. The smell of the dust was most memorable. I clearly remember having difficulty breathing, not being able to go to sleep. It was so strong. My mom made me and my sister little gauze masks that she dampened and put on us at bed time. There was an ointment called Robb that I would rub on my temples, forehead, even under my nose, and the smell of eucalyptus and camphor helped. My favourite part in Rob's harmattan poem "Under the Harmattan Sky" was where he said we "write no poems." Interesting. Poems for me are very closely related to breath, so that sense came through for me. Looking back though my childhood lens, "mystery" is what best describes the Harmattan for me. Now even more so when on last week’s poem one of the readers mentioned the Harmattan did not come this year.


2. Your poems use space very intentionally. The size of the space between each word, and each letter of each word, seems very intentioned. What drew you to writing in this way? Did you have any other writers as points of inspiration in developing this style?


The words in my poems started to pull apart years ago. It was like coming to a place and feeling at home. I recognized it as my form. It has helped me address rubs and struggles with language and how we are in language. How we inhabit it. The form became an outward expression of this journey. It spoke to me, I learned from it. These spaces are breath, are missing memories, are blanks in our knowledge. They are reminders that our world is not seamless and ordered. There are silences we cannot ignore. I can go further: my order is not your order. We also get lazy and complacent with habitual arrangements of words. A word apart from others can take you on its own journey at the same time as it is part of the community of other word.

An important aspect of the spaces is inviting the reader to come in, take part in this co-creation. As readers, we have a tremendous responsibility reading and interpreting another’s words.

Language is like a net with which we try to catch the slippery fish of experience. It is the fish I am after. Yet, language is seductive. We can end up just playing with the net, be mesmerized by it. So this form for me always reminds me of the permeable membrane that exists between word and world.

I am inspired by people who take risks with language, test its limits and what it can achieve. I am humbled by the fact that no matter how hard we try we cannot put it all in the words. I am curious where the breaking point is. The fine line between the discomfort of chaos and the comfort of order. Or, perhaps for some, it is the other way around: the comfort of chaos and the discomfort of order.


3. These aforementioned spaces in words seem to function in two ways: they enact the words (i.e. "s l   o   w") and they create or isolate new words (i.e. the "us" in "d   us   t" and "ho   us   es"). Then there are some words that are subtly stretched for reasons that are less clear (i.e. "w e r e"). What leads you to playing with the spacing of particular words and not others? Do you feel it intuitively or do you think/map it out very cognitively?

The next logical step was the letters pulling apart. For different reasons. Like in "slow" it is the pace, or it could be for emphasis, or to invite the eye to linger with letter combinations. My latest exploration is highlighting words within words. For instance, in houses and dust, what struck me was that they contain us. We also get blurred by the dust. I see it as a way of adding an extra layer of images/ideas, subtexts, meta-content. I could easily be in danger of overdoing it. But, hey, if I do not overdo it, how else will I know I have gone too far? In the case of "w e r e": I saw we’re in it. And wondered if the reader will see "we’re memory" at the same time as "dust" and "desert" being memory. For me this poem is very much about memory, haunting us like the dust. How it renews itself, and us. Or, perhaps, "w e r e" is one instance of pushing too far. This is a new poem. I have to be patient, trust the balance will be established over time. I hope in each poem the technique responds to the content and continues to be an exploration, instead of a set form or path.

We spend so much time arguing around and about words. So many battles today are fought on the level of words (political, academic, ideological, religious). Yet, the words only fragment something whole (a thought/feeling) that is trying to come through. So I fragment the words. Meaning is in the words, but also not in them. Are we in control of the words or are they in control of us? Language is a slippery slope and can be treacherous. At the same time it can present us with many gifts.


4. Both of your poems featured thus far on OGOV have been written in couplets. Is this a general style of yours, a particular style you prefer for your African poems, or merely a coincidence?

They both took that shape, but may not have. This one was more premeditated than "Savannah Rain, West Africa" since it begins with the cold and the dust coming in couplets. That set the tone for me. This also goes back to the previous question: of how much is intuitive and how much is planned. Can we separate the two? I like to premeditate some. Yet, once the poem is loose on the page I am also prepared to flow with it, see where it leads. Gaston Bachelard in his book The Poetics of Reverie says: “The word lives syllable by syllable in danger of internal reveries.” If I cannot learn something from writing a poem, I am not interested in writing it. Perhaps an analogy might be: the teacher who knows when to abandon the lesson plan and follow the opportunity that a classroom serendipitously presents her. It is a fine balance between structure and flow. I am happy to embrace that in my practice. Some serendipity may grab my attention and then I can work that in the structure.

Now, for the reader the premeditated might appear coincidental. What was coincidental may be so seamless and graceful that it appears premeditated. For instance, the lack of punctuation was premeditated. I imagined how in the haze such little signposts will disappear first. However, if I had not said this you can come up with your own explanation/s (and you will) irrespective of what I intended, or did not intend. We are just that kind of creature. And that could lead to new serendipities and creations.

If I planned everything out before hand I am unlikely to venture into unknown territory. The sense of play and discovery is lost. And there is so much negotiation to do between word and world, and it could be done in an infinite number of ways. To quote Bachelard again: “What a lot of minor conflicts we must resolve upon returning from vagabond reverie to reasonable vocabulary!” In the complex laboratory of reverie and writing it is difficult to distinguish all these aspects.

For me writing is organic. It flows and changes and I let myself be at the mercy of what wants to come through. Of what possibilities are inherent in that moment of writing. Most of the time I find that a lot more interesting from what I planned. Again Bachelard nicely puts it: “For a dreamer, a dreamer of words, they are all swollen with insanities.” It is a constant back and forth between what the words want me to say and what I want to say with the words. In that process, I believe, both the word and the writer are enriched.


5. What new things have happened in your life/writing in the year since our readers first met you and your writing?

2009 was a busy year. It started with writing collaborated poems, four of which got published in Mutating the Signature issue of qarrtsiluni. Along with that in February my first poem went up here on OGOV with an interview. There were a couple more interviews last year, one with The Peak, and one with The Cascade. Press 1, BluePrintReview, Matrix, Vallum and ditch, poetry that matters gave a home to another 12 poems. The anthology A Verse Map of Vancouver housed another two. I won an Honourable Mention at the SIWC Poetry Contest. The highlight was the 4 Poets book in which Mother Tongue Publishing showcased the work of four emerging British Columbian poets. I had a lot of fun launching it. I must have read at least 25 times last year all together.

In the summer I completed my comprehensive exams in Philosophy of Education and in the Fall presented at the 2nd Symposium on Poetic Inquiry (Prince Edward Island). I had a chapter published in the book Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant Voices in the Social Sciences(comprising of 12 poems). Finally, I completed my first full length manuscript. This spring I will be the feature poet in The New Orphic Review, and I had my first micro story accepted for the BluePrintReview. As of January, I took on the volunteer position of Vancouver/Lower Mainland Representative for the Federation of BC Writers. Phew. It feels like a lot. But it is what I enjoy doing.

Contact Daniela:

Email: daniela(at)livingcode.org
Website: http://strangeplaces.livingcode.org/

Author Photo © Frank Lee

A Harmattan Matter - Prince Mensah

The village was subdued by a sudden attack of abnormalities,
As the weather drove a wedge between sons of the same mother.
We wondered why it happened same time, every year as we browsed
Through concordances of our superstitions
Slapping blame on whatever peccadilloes we had committed
In complete disregard for the wages of our sins.
This was our state of mind until the old woman uttered words of wisdom,
Words to secure our freedom from naiveté and cluelessness
About this season of tortured skin and tempestuous tempers.
So we listened, we learned, we understood
This cantankerous saga between our hearts and the Harmattan:
We had dealt with what we could do nothing about and we lost.
But harm is harmless when arms are together and men would rather
Understand than undermine each other since the weather
Is no excuse for what we do to each other,
For seasons change but life goes on in the village.

"A Harmattan Matter" is the first of our series of poems on the Harmattan. New entries will be posted each week, and collected here.

Author Profile - Prince Mensah

Biography:

Born in Ghana, Prince Mensah has twenty-five stage plays to his credit. Some of them have been acted at the Accra Arts Center and at several locations in Accra. His articles and stories have been published in the STEP magazine, P & P, Ghanadot.com and The Free Press. His poetry has been published in the Munyori Journal, UNESCO's Other Voices International Project, The Muse Literary Magazine and the Dublin Writer's Workshop.

Prince Mensah has published seventeen books of poetry. They are Memoirs of A Native Son, I Shall, I Will, I Can (Poetry Inspired by Barack Obama), Afrocentric, ecclesiastes, State of An Abstract Mind, The Griot Metropolitan, The Land of Broken Mirrors, Coronation, Enough is Enough, World War-Free, in praise of the calabash, Prophylaxis, Via Dolorosa, Tabula Rasa, Eclectic, Situational Hazard and Chronology.

Prince is a Consultant in Workplace Mediation, an HIV/AID Treatment Advocate and an Eligible Translator/Interpreter in Twi & Fante for the Judicial Consortium of 40 American States. He lives in the United States with his wife, Charisse.

Prince is the head of North American promotions for One Ghana, One Voice.

Five questions with Prince Mensah:

1. As a child, what was your reaction to the coming of the Harmattan? Has that changed now that you are an adult?

As a child, I dreaded the Harmattan because it made my life miserable. I had itchy skin and could not play soccer, because I was running out of breath every time. Day time in Harmattan was always a period of respiratory torture. However, night time was splendid because the wind was cool and calming. This gave Harmattan a ying-yang effect to it.

As an adult, I have come to understand the Harmattan and how it affects mood and skin. I have now grasped the nature of this interesting West African season because of the marriage of good and bad elements – the cruelty of the wind at day and its calming effects at night. I see that the lessons to life are hidden in nature.


2. Living in the U.S. now, do you miss the Harmattan season at all? And how does it compare to an American winter?

Yes, I miss Harmattan nights – those nights of soothing, playful breeze that gave me the comfort to sleep well. You know, people usually stay up late during the Harmattan season because it occurs around major religious festivities for Muslims and Christians. Eid-al-Fitr and Christmas are both celebrated during Harmattan.

As compared to American winters, like the one we just experienced in the Maryland/DC/Virginia area, Harmattan feels like summer. At least, homeless people can sleep in Harmattan but you do not want to be caught outside in a snow blizzard.


3. Is there any way you can compare Harmattan to life?

Harmattan is life. Life has good and bad sides. Yet we love life and try to do the best we can with it. Harmattan creates angry folks at day but inspires lovers at night. Same season, differing results. There is something to be learned from that.


4. As a poet, what do you think is the best way to get people in Ghana more interested in talking and writing about the nuances of living in Ghana?

Ghanaians love a good show. However, poetry and prose have been neglected because of an artistic and social over-dependence on drama. In Ghana, poetry is not the most lucrative artistic venture and you write poetry because your mind keeps getting flooded with beautiful descriptions of simple things. Prose can be difficult because you have a thousand editors trying to tell you what to do. Writing drama has more potential than the first two because it has the chance to be performed or adapted into a screenplay. The balance is wanting because the three arms of literature work hand in hand. This situation is most unfortunate.

I hope the high schools and universities will find a way to enable students to become original scribes of their own experiences through poetry and prose. I have always held the belief that after 50 years of independence, our beloved country should be able to market her literature to the world. Not only through movies. Not only through music. But through written accounts by the sons and daughters of the motherland.


5. How is life going these days, and how is Mensa Press doing?

Life is interesting, like the Harmattan. Sometimes, it sucks the moisture of hope from one’s existence. Sometimes, it soothes the deepest ache. All these make us all the wiser.

Mensa Press is looking forward to a big year, in terms of promoting Ghanaian and global poetry. We have Foster Toppar’s "By The Rivers of Our Dreams" in the works. We have received spectacular entries of our five soon-to-be published anthologies – "Defiled Sacredness," "The War Against War," "Visions of the Motherland," "We Come From One Place" and "Whispers in the Whirlwind."

We are still asking for more entries because we have not reached the minimum yet. If you have a poet friend, please tell them about this opportunity to market their poetry to the world. I can promise that the poetry we have received so far oozes with originality and we cannot wait to publish the books later on this year. Our website should be functional soon and we seek to become the outlet for original poetry and prose from Ghana.

Contact Prince:

Email: pryncemensah(at)yahoo.com
Website: http://www.freewebs.com/pryncemensah/