Readers' Picks
When the War Came to Ghana by Andy Aryeetey (November 24th, 2012)
Comments on When the War Came to Ghana:
"With comical images of horror, "When the War Came to Ghana” cleverly drills at the agitation and wranglings which lurk behind Ghana’s peaceful facade. The essence of the message is everything except the endorsement of violence." - Darko Antwi
"Aryeetey is a good poet who is unafraid of telling his society what he sees in the mirror. " - Prince Mensah
"Great piece. I laughed and sighed at the realities of Ghanaian politics and life." - Bernadette Poku
The Still Small Voice by Dela Bobobee (January 21st, 2012)
Comments on A Still Small Voice:
"Dela's poem is a somber call for introspection - as individuals and as a society. It was the first poem to be featured in 2012 and made a world of impact for me by its thematic choices. We might seek the high and lofty or knock on the doors of fate and destiny but weaving through our dreams and actions is the still small voice. The voice of our conscience. The sound of our ideals. The noise of our souls. The aural essence of our spirits. 'The Still Small Voice' is a poem to be read over and over again. It is layered with meanings and laden with reminders to listen to the nudging of our higher angels. In 'The Still Small Voice', Dela Bobobee seeks to preempt a repeat of generational mistakes that have been the bane of many countries in the struggle for social progress. The poet becomes prophet, priest and propagandist for 'the still small voice'. To balance idealism with realism, Mr. Bobobee challenges his readers with another weapon: the past-
if we have done it before
then we can still do it again
Such poetry is hard to find and I definitely consider it as one of the best I have ever read on One Ghana, One Voice." - Prince Mensah
"The Still Small Voice comes from God. This is the voice that speaks to every human heart, whether sinful or righteous. "The Still Small Voice" is a prophetic poem." - Dominic Arituo
"Didactic and very African. I really enjoy not only reading [Dela's] poems but also studying them thoroughly..." - Martin Elorm Dogbo
Our President Died: A Poem for Mills by Nana Yaw Sarpong (August 9th, 2012)
Comments on Our President Died: A Poem for Mills:
"Each poem by Nana Yaw Sarpong inspires respect. "Our President Died: A Poem for Mills" is particularly sovereign, per figurative language. It threads on a plot which the average poet would consider as tightrope. When solidarity is expressed unreservedly, as this poem has, then the author’s objectivity should be praised. " - Darko Antwi
"The tributes we received following President Mills' death were overflowing, both in their praise and their quantity. Nana Yaw Sarpong's was one of the best, most challenging, and most interesting." - Rob Taylor
Staff Picks
O! Jebu! Stared At The Beginning As Ananse Tickled Himself In The End by Novisi Dzitrie (January 28th, 2012)
Comments on O! Jebu! Stared At The Beginning As Ananse Tickled Himself In The End:
"This poem employs mythology and legend to explain the mundane. By doing this, Novisi Dzitrie continues the ageless tradition in African cultures that teaches wisdom and knowledge through folklore. Nowadays, African poets try to sound like Western poets in their themes and techniques but a poet like Novisi is to be praised. He takes the old and makes it new. He moves ahead by connecting with the past. "O! Jebu!..." is allegory through poetic devices, a superb example of a distinctive essence in African literature - the commingling of tangibles and intangibles as a device to understand existence. " - Prince Mensah
"Novisi Dzitrie is a writer whose literature has the flair to attract obsessive public admiration. His wits are so sharp, and his imagery so refined." - Darko Antwi
"A wonderful, playful poem. It got my vote based on the title alone!" - Rob Taylor
Memories of the Electricity Company of Ghana by Kofi A. Amoako (February 4th, 2012)
Comments on Memories of the Electricity Company of Ghana:
"Kofi A. Amoako, a Toronto-based Ghanaian poet, was a wonderful new arrival here at OGOV in 2012. We featured four of his poems over the course of the year, and any one of them could have been selected here. "Memories" was his first, most playful, and perhaps most filled with love for his home country." - Rob Taylor
"I love this poem! What an insight into life in Ghana. I will be visiting soon and I hope the power is on and off when needed!" - Moira
Tapestry by Darko Antwi (November 3rd, 2012)
Comments on Tapestry:
"It was a pleasure to watch "Tapestry" develop on our site. Originally written in response to Jabulani Mzinyathi's sharp-edged poem "french conference in the drc" and posted in the comment section, we were able to watch Darko Antwi work through a number of iterations before arriving at the final poem. And what a final poem it is: simple in language and yet weaving a complicated and beautiful tapestry of languages and ideas." - Rob Taylor
""Tapestry" is a trapeze between one's native tongue and another tongue - essential for wordsmiths, important to seekers of wisdom. We really do not know this wide world until we understand it in another person's language." - Prince Mensah
O! Jebu! climbed the mountain and stood atop, akimbo!
As if as if...
looked deep down the valley into the hole;
raising his head next to look up at the empty sky.
This system is sick...
O! Jebu! must face the tasks:
put things apart; make sense of the whole;
bring the pieces back together!
But where...
where do we place the noesis?
O! Jebu! stretched his right hand upwards...
The sky was nowhere within his reach!
So let us tell tales...
for the lack of knowledge
between the hole deep down the valley and the empty sky high above.
Let us say... they say...
They say Mawu used to live on the next floor upstairs!
And as it used to be... they say...
O! Jebu! could stand on his two feet and touch the sky
or when he felt like it, he could look out of his window
and give Mawu a wink or a wave of high five!
But it came to pass... the ancestors disobeyed Mawu!
Day after day
they lifted their heavy pestles skywards
and pounded the peace of Mawu
as they crushed yam, coco-yam, plantain and cassava into fufu.
So Mawu stormed out in anger
and removed the sky from within the reach of man!
And so O! Jebu! must now rent the services of an intercessor,
born of a virgin or of pure oracles,
if he ever wishes to speak to Mawu the omnipresent!
And yet little did Mawu the all-knowing know
O! Jebu! would soon fly aircrafts into his sky.
Mother of palmwine! Mawu Sodza!
The same God who remains the same, they say,
and yet changes regardless without prior notice.
Mother of palmwine! Mawu Sodza!
So let us tell another tale.
They say, again, so let us say:
Let us say Kweku Ananse the spider took the place of O Jebu
and presented himself before Death
in a puzzle of many a great complication.
So Death said to Ananse:
"Because you have eaten my food,
you must die...you will die! You and your family!"
But Ananse did not want to die. No!
Instead, Ananse pedaled his many legs
in one heart-throbbing attempt to flee...
So they say... and so let us say...
Let us say it is the reason why Ananse is seen caught in his own web
in corners or on ceilings of buildings in his attempt to flee…
Flee...flee from Death!
So we tell tales...
Tales to fill up the space, to make up for the lack of knowledge
between the hole deep down the valley and the empty sky high above;
strange-tales... fairy-tales...
Tales that make us cry maa maa! Or make us laugh kwa kwa kwa!
Tales of why the crab is headless,
Tales of why the moon dies,
... of why soldier-ants move in a file,
... of why indeed the monkey has a tail!
Biography:
Novisi Dzitrie is a Ghanaian who was born in Kakata, Liberia. He moved to Ghana when he was four years old, long before the war. Novisi has ventured a number of genres of writing but poetry comes pleasingly to him as a first love. Some of his short stories have been published in The Mirror, and two of his poems were recently published in the anthology Look Where You Have Gone To Sit, edited by Martin Egblewogbe and Laban Hill.
Five Questions with Novisi Dzitrie:
1. How long have you been writing poetry?
I started writing poetry by some "accident" in 1999. So that makes about 13 years now.
2. Who are your favourite poets? Which poets have most informed and inspired your work?
I must confess I didn't read much poetry before I found myself writing it. So I’m yet really in the process of discovering the works of other poets. However, I generally tend to like works from Nigeria for the force behind their words and for their palpable frankness. Niyi Osundare, Ogaga Ifowodo, J P Clark, Christopher Okigbo, and Wole Soyinka readily come to mind. Elsewhere, I like works by Eavan Boland, someone I consider, if you want, a man of a woman in her writing. And closer home in Ghana, I have developed some connections with works by Kofi Anyidoho and Martin Egblewogbe. These are poets whose works I have been informed and inspired by in many ways than I can consciously mark out.
3. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry?
I write to express myself; to free my head from being flooded with thoughts and keep me from going mad. I like to brood over issues and search for logical threads but I don’t like to memorize points. I think there is enough storage media in the world for that. Yet I don’t think there are enough words, breath or punctuation to hold the places in the expression of ideas by any one individual, and that is where poetry comes in handy for me. Poetry can say a lot in a few words.
So I’d say I want simply to contribute my thoughts to the body of ideas that already exist in society so I don’t need to be around in person before anyone can access these. That for me is critical because I hold the firm position that human beings have come very far and so should have enough to learn from so that we can minimize the mistakes we make.
4. Your poems are punctuation-rich (lots of exclamation marks and ellipses and colons and question marks). What drove you to adopt this style?
I just don’t seem to have enough words to capture the moments between speech and thought, the moments between high and low pitches of sound, the moments between choking on something and the welling up of tears in the eyes and so on. Such moments, for me, are rich and need somehow to be communicated, however inadequately, even with the form of text on paper, so that one needs not be told these moments explicitly. That is how I find life to be. Genuine tears, for example, are not announced, they just happen by the kick of some emotions. So I don’t know if I should call it a style really, but I try to employ punctuations to capture those moments when thought processes are not complete or when sentences need not be completed before communication is effected and so on.
5. Do you believe that poetry can affect the politics of Ghana? If so, how? Are there particular types of poetry that are better suited to accomplishing this than others?
I’d say yes, poetry can affect the politics of Ghana and I think it already does in varying ways that may not be readily obvious. It depends on the quality of the discourse. If the discourse is about triviality then I’d not expect positive impacts. So to answer the question of how, I’d say the debates must be high on sustainable philosophical and theoretical postulations or affirmations. And poetry is one tool for capturing theories succinctly in as much as they help in dissecting issues.
I’d not say some particular types of poetry are better suited. I’d rather say, like any other political tool, it must just be appealing no matter how it’s crafted, and then people’s attention can be captured for the intended message. Even for mere aesthetics, which poetry provides in abundance, we can observe that Obama in America, for example, won an election by delivering awe inspiring prose-poems on his campaign. The phrase "Yes We Can" speaks volumes. Nkrumah did a similar thing in his speeches for Ghana’s Independence and for African unity, and the poet holds the unique place in society for establishing such influences in the political discourse with his/her craft. Indeed I actually hold the position that a poet has no option than to speak to political choices, either directly or indirectly, because a poets art is affected by the political forces.
Contact Novisi:
dnovisi(at)gmail.com
