An End and a Beginning

Dear OGOV Readers,

When I co-founded One Ghana, One Voice with Julian Adomako-Gyimah, I hardly imagined that eight years later we would still be around. I dreamed, though it felt like a very distant dream, that OGOV would have served its purpose and faded away, replaced by other magazines and organizations.

When I moved to Accra in 2006 I spent a good six months reading newspapers, listening to the radio, scouring Legon bulletin boards, visiting libraries, doing everything in my power to try to find and connect with other poets and poetry lovers. I became determined that if I did finally connect with someone, I would help make sure that new poets and poetry lovers had an easier time than I did. Finally, Julian and I found each other and OGOV was born. Our goal was to connect writers as much as to celebrate their writing (each poet received an author interview, outlining where they lived and what motivated them to write, and was required to provide their email address - you needed to be willing to connect to be on our site!). Soon enough we had poets in Kumasi corresponding with poets in Koforidua corresponding with ex-patriot poets in the US and UK. And not long after, other magazines and organizations followed - Akwantuo, Ghana Book Review, Writers Project of Ghana, and many more.

What a joy this was to behold! It also, admittedly, took the wind out of my sails, so to speak: Ghanaian poetry was (and is) thriving. By OGOV's five-year anniversary in 2012, when Darko Antwi wrote his wonderful summary of OGOV's work for the Poetry Foundation Ghana website, I felt like we'd reached our goals. We'd featured over 70 poets, and watched many of them go on to found new organizations or publish books. Also, now back living in Canada and with far less time available for the magazine, I no longer felt like I was the right person to lead a Ghanaian poetry magazine.

And yet, I couldn't stop. Why? Because of Martin Egblewogbe, because of Aisha Nelson, because of Kofi A. Amoako. Because of "Scarecrow" and "The Pilgrim Looks Up". Because of your overwhelming responses - in quantity, in quality and mostly in heart - to our calls for poems memorialising Kofi Awoonor and John Atta Mills. Because of Prince Mensah and L.S. Mensah's wonderful "How Poems Work" essays. Because of all the poems and comments and tweets that kept appearing in my inbox. In short, because of you.

How could I leave this? All of you?

So I held on longer than I should, through a move to Zambia and another return to Canada, through career changes and new schooling, and the site suffered as a result. We pulled off a few great things in 2014, including Ngwatilo Mawiyoo's interview with Kwani? editor Billy Kahora, but it was clear that OGOV needed a fresh leader, a fresh start.

And there was Prince Mensah - poet, editor, translator extraordinaire. A steadfast supporter of the magazine since its inception, for years Prince has emailed me whenever the magazine's lagged in producing new content for more than a week or two. Looking back, I realised that for the past few years Prince had become not only one of OGOV's greatest contributors and champions, but our new beating heart.

So it's time for that heart to take the lead.

I offered the position of Editor-in-Chief to Prince in February 2015 and he accepted. Already, Prince has produced new, rejuvenated submission guidelines, reopening the magazine to general submissions. He has many other exciting plans in the works, but I will leave it to Prince to reveal those at the appropriate time. Needless to say, I am confident OGOV will thrive during Prince's term, and I encourage you, our readers and writers, to get involved in shaping OGOV's future. New content, marking the start of Prince's editorship, will begin appearing on the site at the beginning of May. Stay tuned!

I will stay involved in the magazine as a Contributing Editor, helping where I can, and eagerly watching to see where we go next. Thank you all for making the past eight years such a blessing and joy. I can't imagine not having so many of you as a part of my community, and my life.

Thank you, especially, to Julian and Prince, and to my wife, Marta, without whose energy, patience and encouragement this site would never have come into existence. I remember one Saturday at Sharpnet Internet Cafe in Osu when Marta and I sat side-by-side for eight hours researching newspapers and websites and sending out press release after press release announcing this crazy new idea: an online magazine devoted to Ghanaian poetry. I remember that very distant dream Julian, Marta and I held. Now Julian is a father of two (the second just arrived last month!) and Marta and I are expecting our first child in August. And our first "baby," this little magazine of ours, is already moving out of the house, heading out on a new adventure. Imagine!

Thank you, thank you, all. And best of luck, Prince, though I know you will not need it.

Yours,

Rob Taylor
Co-Founder and Former Editor-in-Chief, One Ghana, One Voice

How Poems Work #7 - Rob Taylor on Daniel Karasik's "The Pilgrim Looks Up"

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.

When I approached Daniel Karasik with a request to republish his poem "The Pilgrim Looks Up" on One Ghana, One Voice, I mentioned that I was also considering writing a “How Poems Work” essay on it. Daniel sent me a reply confirming he was happy to have the poem republished, and even went so far as to offer me his own take on a “How Poems Work” essay for “The Pilgrim Looks Up.” It was two words long: It doesn’t.

It was a surprising comment on a poem Karasik had chosen only months before to include in his first poetry collection, Hungry (Cormorant Books, 2013). One can probably chalk it up, in large part, to Karasik’s humility and good sense of humour. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he felt there was a little bit of truth to the statement, as well (a disappointing thought considering the excellence of the poem). I remember how quickly I turned on a few of my own darlings (only sometimes deservedly) after finally seeing them in publication in my first poetry collection. Set in their new home within a larger collection, some of them having until then gathered dust in a drawer for 5+ years, a few of my poems seemed out of place, unable to hold their own. And the poems most likely to disappoint me were the ones I was now most distant from, both in the length of time since I’d written them and the physical distance I’d put between the “me” of here and now and the “me” of then and there (hunched over my notebook, scrawling out first drafts).

Our feelings about poems, especially our own, are elusive and ever-changing. Over time and space we return to these texts, inevitably older and hopefully wiser, and they become new things, the wisdom contained within them growing or shrinking or transforming. The poems we read while travelling the world take on different import in our minds than the ones we read in the comfort of our living rooms. Our relationship with poems we read at 20 or 30 or 60 years old are fundamentally different because of that change.

So maybe Daniel was being humble. Maybe he was being serious. Possibly (probably, I suspect) a little of both. To ask him, though, would ruin the fun of speculation. And from what better vantage point can one consider “The Pilgrim Looks Up” than from one clouded in uncertainty?


“The Pilgrim Looks Up” is a meditation on uncertainty, specifically on the key ingredients that make our understandings of the world less-that-assured: memory, place and perspective. The triangular relationship between these three forces is built throughout the poem, with a particular emphasis on one or the other presented from stanza to stanza. Running through the poem, also, is the establishment and merger of two separate narratives: the story of the speaker of the poem (the “speaker” for the purposes of this essay) and the story of the book-within-a-poem’s narrator (the “book’s narrator”). All of this builds to Karasik’s conclusions, on how we live in and embody uncertainty, in the closing fourth stanza.

Right from the first line, Karasik inserts his theme of “memory” into the poem. He does this by injecting it into the (fictitious?) book his speaker had been reading the week before the poem’s “action” takes place. Specifically, he brings in the theme of memory’s evasiveness – how most of what we experience slips away, leaving only touchstones (which themselves may not necessarily be “accurate"). In this case it is the book’s narrator’s habit of “looking up / to observe the sky’s condition” that remains in the minds of his childhood acquaintances. It is a habit that the speaker will come to embody by the end of the poem, as the meta-story creeps steadily into the poem’s central narrative.

The second stanza, a single brief sentence over two lines, performs an essential function. It propels the lives of the speaker and the book’s narrator further toward one another (both are “travelling”) and in so doing establishes that a sense of place and placelessness (a sense most clearly highlighted when one travels) is a concern not just of the book’s narrator, returning to his Tyrolean home, but also a direct concern of the speaker.

The third stanza provides for us the speaker’s place of travel, “the African coast,” and introduces the touchstone memory of the speaker’s story: the dust-filled harmattan sky. This touchstone fits well with the touchstone of the book’s narrator’s story – “looking up / to observe the sky’s condition” – preparing us for the closing fourth stanza, and the full merger of the two storylines. The third stanza also aggressively introduces new perspectives into the poem, which play with how we are to see, and approach, the poem. Until now, all we’ve known about the poem’s location is that it probably isn’t set in Tyrol (an international region in the Alps that includes both the state of North Tyrol in Austria and the province of South Tyrol in Italy), which seems “outside” the speaker’s world – a far off place read about in a book. But in stanza three we are not only given our first grounded place within the speaker’s world, “the African coast,” but also a clear perspective from which to view it: outside. “On the African coast… the sky would stay…”. We are viewing Africa from a distance, both of time and place (that place, I assume, being the Western world).[1]

Harmattan, West Africa
(Photo Source)

And yet a twist is thrown into that structure by the introduction of the word harmattan.[2] Harmattan is such a foreign concept to Western audiences that the word itself is underscored by a red squiggly line each time I type it into my North American word processor. (Do you mean Marmaton? it asks when I right-click – my word processor knows the name of a tributary of Kansas' Little Osage River, but not the name for a major recurring environmental event which affects the lives of hundreds of millions of people annually). Here in Karasik’s poem, though, harmattan is mentioned without explanation. And in making that choice, Karasik welcomes in another perspective to the poem: the West African insider, the person for whom “harmattan” does not need quotes or italics or a red squiggly line. The poem is instantaneously shot into this new moment and place, as if the author is saying “We all know what’s going on here. If you feel left out, you can Google it.”

Marmaton River, Kansas, USA

The poem also enters, in this moment, into dialogue with the volume of West African poems written on the subject of the harmattan, and some of the dominant themes such poems often embody – confusion, mystery, deprivation of one sort or another.[3]

So here in stanza three we reach the height of the poem’s kaleidoscoping perspectives: we see from the vantage point of the speaker, reading a book; then the book’s narrator, travelling to Tyrol; then the book’s narrator’s Tyrolean acquaintances, remembering back; then the speaker travelling “away”; then the speaker in place, the “away” becoming the “here”, the language assumed and comfortable. We are speaker, narrator, acquaintance, foreigner, native.

It should be noted that for all these locales and perspectives, most of which are affixed to particular geographic places, Karasik’s language avoids specificity. The childhood home is “Tyrolean,” which could refer to any number of specific places on either side of the Austrian-Italian border; the location for the harmattan is simply “the African coast.” Bearing the outside knowledge that Karasik once lived in Accra, one can assume that the poem is situated there. In the version of Karasik's poem “A Wrapping Ceremony” which appears in Hungry, Karasik doesn’t shy away from adding a locational tag as an epigraph to the poem in order to specifically locate the events in Ghana. Yet here he resists that impulse, and instead goes as far as to even strip the “West” off of “West Africa,” making it appear the poem could be situated anywhere on the continent (though, of course, most of Africa is harmattan-free). This seems to be an intentional choice of Karasik’s: to keep the exact locales of the poem, the exact places and perspectives and memories, as hazy as the harmattan sky itself. To keep us unfixed and borderless, as both travel and the harmattan encourage.


In the closing stanza Karasik merges the two narratives, and the two characters, in the poem. The “pilgrim” of the book and the “pilgrim” that is the speaker become one through their common motion: the speaker looks up into the harmattan sky “so unwilling to reveal itself.” The poem about reading a book about memory becomes a poem that has fully absorbed the book and become simply about the core thing – memory itself.

As the two characters become one in that closing image, our perspective, as readers, becomes clear as well. We find ourselves watching the speaker watching the sky, we as readers positioned both outside the speaker’s world and somewhat present in it, viewing the speaker through the very haze that he/she is staring up at. A triangular relationship is formed between the reader, the speaker and the harmattan, mirroring the triangular relationship between memory, place and perspective that has been explored in the poem.

But Karasik doesn’t simply leave us with these observations and connections as neutral thoughts – the speaker specifically ends the poem emphasizing how fascinating he finds all this fog and forgetting and uncertainty, essentially prodding us to be fascinated by it ourselves. And when we do that, the questions posed by the poem come spilling out: What are we looking at when we look into the haze of memory, mired as it is in different perspectives, cultures, and histories? Can we see a memory from different angles, once it’s been made? If memory is reduced to touchstones, can it ever be expanded again? What can we see? What can we know? What of our experiences can we really retain? What can we retell?

Memory fades. Perspective is always limited. Travel for insight alone is ultimately fraught. In the end all our efforts result in some kind of imperfection, some level of failure. This, of course, brings in the alternate reading of the poem’s last line: “I could look at nothing else,” not because the speaker was fascinated, but because he had no other choice. The harmattan would not permit another way of looking. Regardless of all this thinking on the matter, the outcome is the same. Everything results in haze, in harmattan. To some extent the answer to the question “How does it work?” is always It doesn’t. But, as Karasik asserts, each morning we inevitably step out the door and look up nonetheless, fascinated pilgrims that we are.

[1] The common thought here being that any inter-continental dialogue between Africa (especially English speaking Africa) and an outside force occurs with “the West,” most often Europe. As Ngugi wa Thiong’o put it recently on the Chimurenga blog:

The links between Asia and Africa and South America have always been present but in our times they have been made invisible by the fact that Europe is still the central mediator of Afro-Asian-Latino discourse… In my case, I had always assumed that my intellectual and social formation was tied to England and Europe, with no meaningful connection to Asia and South America. There was a reason. I wrote in English. My literary heroes were English. Kenya being a British colony, I had learnt the geography and history of England as the central reference in my widening view of the world. Even our anti-colonial resistance assumed Europe as the point of contest; it was we, Africa, against them, Europe.

This is changing, of course, with Asia’s steady advancement in Africa. But for now, and for the purposes of this poem, the presence of the West-Africa dynamic seems a fair assumption.

[2] For unfamiliar readers, the harmattan is a seasonal West African trade wind which blows dust from the Sahara down into the Gulf of Guinea. You can read other OGOV poems about the harmattan here.

[3] For a classic sample, read Kwesi Brew's "The Dry Season".

Rob Taylor is the editor and co-founder of One Ghana, One Voice.

How Poems Work #4 - Rob Taylor on Nana Agyemang Ofosu's "18 Miles to Yeero"

The following is the fourth installment in our "How Poems Work" series. This series aims to give OGOV readers and poets an opportunity to talk about some of their favourite poems previously featured on the site. Nana Agyemang Ofosu's "18 Miles to Yeero" initially appeared on our site on November 27th, 2010, and that original posting can be read here.


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18 Miles to Yeero - Nana Agyemang Ofosu


The car ran like a hare’s sprint
In a blink we left them to squint
To see us through the vaporizing sand
The whole mass of brown land
Danced in the atmosphere

The journey was not smooth
So rough like an aching cough
Soon I was at Kadoli
And I anticipated Gudayiri

Along the route I numbered the houses
About thirty at Kadoli
And the rest I considered abandoned
The place was a corpse

But at Kadoli we met two women
Each with a child wrapped at the back
Their destination, Gudayiri
But they were nowhere near

They had walked miles with dust
On their feet that could turn a pond brown
I was lost in the sweat from their faces
As they jumped in the wagon

Scattered houses along the route
Dilapidated and rotten thatch roofs
Hung loosely on waste-away bricks
Life in the interior, an eye saw

I wished there was space to accommodate
The many more women along the route
Who paddle their hearts, early morning, to Wa
And back with hope of a better life

I am at Yeero
Don’t think it Yaro, a man’s name
In a flash I went round the town

My journey was only an eighteen mile trek
But I saw the countryside
And witnessed the pain of women
And the neglect of remote towns

If you get time tell others
Of these many villages
Where the politicians visit once in four years
Say that we need them to act
And it is now and no other time.

First off, full disclosure: I am the head editor of One Ghana, One Voice. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I am a fan of "18 Miles to Yeero" by Nana Agyemang Ofosu – it is a poem I chose to publish, after all. That said, every poem published on OGOV isn’t automatically a favourite of mine. If OGOV was a traditional literary magazine with a general publishing mandate and four (or less) issues a year, perhaps every poem published would be deeply loved by me. But OGOV isn’t standard by any stretch. We publish weekly and function as much as a community-building forum as a venue to highlight literary gems. So, regularly I will publish poems which aren’t my favourite, but which do something interesting or unexpected, or which show potential (especially in the case of first-time contributors).

Initially, "18 Miles to Yeero" was one such poem. I was intrigued by its content (rarely do we have poems submitted to us that are set in the Upper West region), but little else. Moreover, I was bothered by the sudden dropping of the rhyme scheme after the first stanza (although a full-length poem with an AABBC rhyme scheme would probably have been worse!). Still, the inconsistency concerned me. Nonetheless, I thought the poem was interesting enough to merit publication, so I posted it on OGOV in late November 2010.

In the year that’s passed since then, "18 Miles" has grown to be one of my favourites on the site. I love its rich images, like the “feet that could turn a pond brown” and the roof hanging from “waste-away bricks”. I love the women “Who paddle their hearts, early morning, to Wa / And back with hope of a better life” - the joyous, sweeping nature of the line; how oddly natural the verb “paddling” feels within the dusty scene, “Wa” echoing as “Water” in my mind and on my tongue.

I love, also, the poem’s regionalism. Having only ever travelled through Upper West Region once myself, and briefly at that, all of the place names (beyond Wa) are foreign to me, as I suspect they would be to many readers. But this in no way diminishes the poem. We have all been to towns like Yeero, where you can count all the houses in town as you drive by and “where the politicians visit once in four years”. But by including these rather obscure names, Ofosu is allowing us to feel alienated along with his narrator, as if we, like him, are journeying into an unknown. By tapping universal themes without abandoning an honest description of these real (and remote) places, Ofosu leaves the reader in flux between the known and the mysterious. This, to me, is the optimal space to inhabit as a reader. It is a space rife with possibility for engagement and the discovery of new meaning. And, in part, it is Ofosu’s devotion to regional accuracy that makes entering that space possible in "18 Miles".

I love the end of the poem too, where it takes a turn towards the unabashedly political. This is the kind of turn that many in North America (where I am writing from) would find off-putting, expecting a more “artistic” ending, instead of a direct call for political action. This poem, instead, fits into the rich vein of African literature that faces vital political issues head on. Reading "18 Miles" reminded me very much of Ama Ata Aidoo’s response to a question about the “practicality” of the American “hippie” art of the Sixties:

It comes with freedom - a certain type of freedom which I think no black person in this world has right now. It's almost like doing something which is beautiful and nice because you want to do it - like writing a story about lovers in Paris - it is beautiful, it is nice.... [but] I cannot see myself as a writer, writing about lovers in Accra because you see, there are so many other problems... You know, I feel a responsibility and I feel that it’s the same type of responsibility I think black people all over feel. (African Writers Talking, Heinemann, 1972)

Obviously, much has changed in Ghana since Aidoo spoke these words in 1967. But much has stayed the same, as well, especially in remote Northern towns like the poem's Yeero. So here we have Nana Agyemang Ofosu refusing to talk about lovers in Paris. In a 2010 twist on Aidoo’s 1967 analysis, however, Aidoo waits until the end, like the volta in a sonnet, to spring the political angle on the reader. Ofosu’s is a hybrid poem, then - a descriptive narrative and a political poem fused together by that deep sense of responsibility that has fuelled so much of the best of African writing. Indeed much has changed and much has stayed the same: in poems like Ofosu's the plane may now take off for Paris, but it still lands in Accra, at the gates of Osu Castle.

This brings me to the subject of form (which was the source of much of my original displeasure with "18 Miles"), more specifically that oh-too-smooth AABBC rhyme scheme that opens the poem. What can I say? Here, too, I was won over. At first glance, the poem can seem hastily constructed, as though Ofosu began with a rigorous rhyme scheme and grew tired of its demands after one stanza. Perhaps this is the case, though I doubt it. I doubt it chiefly because of the first unrhymed line, which opens the second stanza: “The journey was not smooth”. With that line, the rhyme scheme falls off, and never recovers. It is as if, in that moment, we have taken a turn off the main highway and on to the potholed dirt road that we will be travelling for the eighteen bumpy miles of the poem.

I’m reminded here of a poem called “Sampling from a Dialogue” by the Canadian poet Don Coles. A poem about an argument between a husband and wife, its form starts off as a traditional sonnet, but slowly unravels as the poem (and argument) proceeds. On the (lucky) thirteenth line, the wife interjects “Well / maybe there is just such a thing as / having enough of somebody”, and the poem’s form falters. The poem ends up being twenty lines (not the sonnet’s traditional fourteen), and both the form and the relationship are left in ruins.*

In both Coles' and Ofosu’s poems, then, a traditional form is played with in order to heighten the felt effect of the poem, with the form itself enacting the content of the poem. It’s a risky thing to do – perhaps the reader will never notice the formal play, or will come to negative conclusions about the abandonment of the form (assuming, incorrectly, that there is only one “right” way to compose a formal poem) – but the payoff can be great.

I was originally one of those readers who missed the payoff when it came to "18 Miles to Yeero". I’m very glad, though, that I gave it a second chance. I still see imperfections in the poem, to be sure, but these are easily overshadowed by its rich language, form, and content. Poems like "18 Miles" humble me as an editor – there isn’t enough time on earth to carefully give multiple readings to every poem submitted to OGOV, but when I rediscover a poem like "18 Miles", I wish there was. I fear what I might have missed publishing over the years. But at the very least I can be happy that this poem made it out there.

I encourage our long-time readers to go back through our archives and find some poems that you may have overlooked, and encourage our new readers to discover those same poems for the first time.






* I owe a debt here to Zachariah Wells, whose anthology Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets (Biblioasis, 2008) introduced me to both the poem itself and to the sonnet hidden away within its twenty lines.
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Rob Taylor is a Co-Founder and Editor at OGOV. You can read more of his writing here.

I Have Gone to Keta: Daytrip - Rob Taylor

"I want to go to Keta
before it’s washed away
before the palm trees wither
and drown outside the bay"

- “I want to go to Keta,” Kobena Eyi Acquah

They are walking on water in Keta Lagoon
as we pull into town then cross the peninsula
to face the Atlantic from atop the boulders
they stacked here to fix the shoreline in this place
where we stand and watch the ocean swell in, then away
revealing chunks of concrete, shattered fingers
of rebar – startling in their permanence –

then turn and wander past what remains
of the half-drowned castle and children splashing
fine sand before it, chasing
a ball of vulcanized white gold
with sparks in their eyes

then on through the town
pocked with puddles and troughs
of water that expand with every turn
until the buildings give way to lagoon,
sloshing among crumbling cement walls
and briny car parts and a man wading in water
up to his ankles who pulls small, netted fish
out of what was once his neighbour’s living room
and smiles mildly, then turns away –
in the distance more men dragging
nets home, water shimmering
under their feet (a trick of the eye,
a flash of the miraculous that surfaces
in the mind at times then disappears below)

then back to the center of town
where the power remains off and lunch
is warm beer and biscuits at the pub
where drunks slam sticky handfuls
of banku onto our table and a miserably
sober man apologises for all the drunks
and power outages and sloppy banku of Africa
then out again to the glare of the street,
towards the station, past the troop of glistening
boys back from the shore, shouting
and grinning, their ball skipping
ahead, a polished stone

and we are away, trotro engine thumping
and wheezing desperately as we plod
our course back to the mainland along
the edge of the now empty lagoon,
the fishermen home with their children
and wives, who, I imagine, are rinsing
dishes and humming the tunes
to childhood songs whose words
they can no longer recall, whose melodies
they thought they’d long ago forgotten.

Originally published in "The Other Side of Ourselves", Cormorant Books, 2011. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Author Profile - Rob Taylor

Biography:

Rob Taylor lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He lived in Accra in 2006-07 with his wife, Marta. His first collection of poetry, The Other Side of Ourselves, was published in April 2011 from Cormorant Books. Rob will be launching his new book in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto throughout May and early June. For specific dates and locations, please visit his website.

"I Have Gone to Keta: Daytrip" is dedicated to Kobena Eyi Acquah, and is reproduced from The Other Side of Ourselves by permission of the author.

Rob is a co-founder and editor of One Ghana, One Voice.

Five Questions with Rob Taylor (asked by Prince Mensah):

1. In "I Have Gone to Keta: Daytrip", you are a stranger travelling through town, taking snapshots of people and places in your head, trying to understand what it all means. Was it easy to connect to the people (and/or place) or did you get the sense of being foreign heightened in your experience?

The poems I wrote while living in Accra can generally be broken down into two halves, one for the first half of my time spent there, and one for the second half. The first half is mainly poems of alienation and confusion, as I settled into a country very different from my own (i.e. “lost” poems). The second half is more poems that exist both “inside” and “outside” the Ghanaian culture (i.e. “lost then found” poems).

"I Have Gone to Keta", however, messed that system up. Keta is like few places on earth, and upon visiting it I was suddenly disoriented again, and found myself back writing about alienation and confusion. But this time it was a little different, a little more informed (certainly reading poems on Keta by Kobena Eyi Acquah and Kofi Awoonor helped prepare me), so I like to think of this poem as a “lost then found then lost again” poem - as a result, themes of appearing and disappearing, remembering and forgetting, rising and sinking, run throughout the poem. I assume similar themes must run through the lives of the people of Keta, who are constantly gaining and losing and regaining their town in their struggle with the sea.

2. Knowing you as a Canadian son of Ghana, this poem comes as no surprise. What are the other emotions and images that did not make their way into the poem?

Hmmm... I tried to pack most things in there. I do think it’s hard to capture the amazement that I had at taking in the scene of a town being consumed by the sea. It’s a scene that, due to global warming, we’ll probably see play out more often in the future - sadly, I suspect that Keta will become less and less of an oddity over the coming years. But that means that Keta is ahead of its time, in a twisted way. It’s a town on the forefront of learning how to adapt to rising sea levels and coastal erosion. It’s an early warning.

3. One of the many vivid snapshots of Keta in "I Have Gone to Keta" is about

a man wading in water
up to his ankles who pulls small, netted fish
out of what was once his neighbour’s living room

In this picture, were you pointing to the social scenario wherein some individuals benefit, be it inadvertently or not, from other people's misfortunes?

I was mainly trying to capture the scene. There are so many odd and unexpected sights in Keta that in many ways this poem was simply my attempt to catalogue them. The story of Keta – a town that is being destroyed by the very natural forces it depends on for its survival – inevitably evokes a great number of political, social, and existential questions. My first goal, then, was to have readers see the scene, and then let those challenging or provocative images go to work in the minds of the readers in whatever ways they would.

4. There is another picture that contains a moment of clarity for me. It is

where drunks slam sticky handfuls
of banku onto our table and a miserably
sober man apologises for all the drunks

Do you think what a society does (whether good or bad) as a whole unit forces its citizens, who might or might not agree with those actions, to constantly clarify that society to strangers? In other words, is our misery as individuals caused by the recklessness of our societies?

No, I don’t think so, on either front. I do think it’s difficult to avoid both misery and the desire to clarify.

Often we can’t see the forest for the trees, but in my experience I find it’s just as easy to get lost in the forest and miss the beauty of the trees. For me, when the drunk bar patrons offered us banku, it was a simple act of generosity, but to the other man in the bar it was tied in to all these fraught, abstract ideas about “Africa”.

Depending on your perspective, the state of Keta can be seen as a sign of the peoples’ failure, or of their resilience – this largely depends on whether you focus on the collective or the individual, the forest or the trees. To cultivate a positive mindset you need both perspectives, and you need them to exist in balance with one another. When one dominates the other, misery and a constant desire to clarify can overtake you. But whether you fall out of balance is up to you to determine.

5. Where the words fade, the music remains. Just as the women of Keta hummed

the tunes
to childhood songs whose words
they can no longer recall, whose melodies
they thought they’d long ago forgotten

what are the lingering memories you still have about the Keta you visited in the poem?

At this point it’s hard for me to separate the poem from my memories, as the visit occured over four years ago. Certainly the image that sticks in my mind the clearest is of the fishermen – the lagoon was so shallow that they really did appear to be walking on water. I was very struck by it – as the son of a Christian minister there aren’t many things that you are taught are more miraculous than walking on water!

Keta is a special place. Despite their hardships, the people we met were warm and generous, and often joy-filled. I hope this poem can be seen as an appropriate tribute to them, and their miraculous town.

Contact Rob:

Email: roblucastaylor(at)gmail.com
Websites: RobLucasTaylor.com, spread it like a roll of nickels

Tuesday - Rob Taylor

How the days go quickly if we let them:
children hissing on market streets,
‘PK two-thousand! PK two-thousand!’

We squeeze past them,
flag down trotros.

They watch us through the plexiglass
as we pull away, though they mostly see
their own reflections,
‘PK two-thousand!’

Their mouths curving to form each syllable,
then an empty space –

sky.

 

Author Profile - Rob Taylor

Biography:

Rob Taylor lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He lived in Accra in 2006-07 with his wife, Marta. His poetry has appeared in over forty print and online magazines and anthologies, and he has published three chapbooks, entitled splattered earth, Child of Saturday and Lyric. The manuscript for his first full-length poetry manuscript won the 2010 Alfred G. Bailey Prize.

Rob is a co-founder and editor of One Ghana, One Voice.

Five Questions with Rob Taylor (asked by Prince Mensah):

1. The mood of the poem is quintessentially that of an open and crowded Ghanaian market. Can you give us insights into the exact moment that triggered this poem?

The exact moment? No. I don’t think there was an exact moment, instead it is based off my collected memory of dozens of similar trotro rides out of various markets and stations, most commonly around Makola Market and Nkrumah Circle in Accra.


2. Do you think hawkers in general are a nuisance or do they add to the color (and commercialization) of a country's identity?

A bit of both, of course. I think though it comes down mostly to mindset – if you want what they are selling, then you love them! I am a disorganized person who generally does things at the last minute, and I regularly run out of the house having forgotten to eat a meal. In Ghana, the solution was easy. In Canada, where I’m now again living, I just sit on the bus feeling my stomach slowly start to digest itself. Another benefit of hawkers for a Canadian guy – desperate to beat the heat at all times - is Fan Ice! Fan Ice hawkers saved me from heat-induced insanity on more than occasion.

All that said, when the guy trying to sell me a set of coat hangers would come by my waiting-to-load trotro for the fifth times, the scene would quickly change from “colourful” to “annoying”. I mean, if I didn’t want them the fourth time...


3. The poem is centered around child hawkers who sing about the price of their wares to passengers. What are your sentiments about child labor in Ghana, as someone who comes from a country where that practice is punishable by the law?

Of course I am opposed to child labour. I am also opposed to fees to attend school, and any other barriers that keep children out of the classroom. But these things are only universally possible with money and stable households for all children. Every country (including Canada), if you go back far enough, used child labour – at the very least children were active workers on family farms. But at some point they became wealthy enough, both as individuals and a state, to generally not require the work of children, and then banned the process on ethical grounds.

But the issue isn’t really the legal “banning” of the practice – Ghana has long had laws on the books against child labour, but 20% of children are still working. It’s about the economy, and the socio-economic stability of the family and the state. The problem cannot be conquered simply by focusing on the particulars of child labour, but instead by uplifting the economy in general, putting more money in the pockets of parents and state support agencies, and reducing the pressures on children to work.


4. Tuesday, (or Benada, as it is called in Akan) is sacred to some Ghanaian tribes, especially the ones located on the coast. It is also used in the phrase, odo benada (which means weeding on Tuesday in Akan), that connotes impotence. Your poem, Tuesday, captures both the sacredness of the day and the impotence of individuals, including children, to get out of bleak socio-economic conditions. Was that intentional or coincidental?

Wow! It’s a wonderful coincidence, a testament to the many-angled light that words, and poems, can cast out, eh? I thank you a great deal for this observation, Prince.

I chose “Tuesday” as the title because, to me, Tuesday is the worst day of the work week. Mondays are unpleasent, but you are (hopefully) rested and ready for it. By mid-day Wednesday, you are halfway through the work week, and on your way out (same for Thursday and Friday). But Tuesdays! I think of Tuesdays as the slowest, hardest day of the week, at least when you are employed doing something you don’t enjoy.

I also chose it, and this seems funny given your observations, because Tuesday is to me one of the days least charged with meaning. Mondays, Wednesdays (“hump day”), Fridays, Saturdays, and (of course) Sundays are all days in which something really happens, whereas Tuesday (and Thursday) are “filler” days between the others, days that “go quickly if we let them.”

But of course, no day is pure “filler”, as you have so aptly demonstrated with "Tuesday", which is why we should enjoy them while we can.


5. As a Ghanaian at heart and in spirit, what is your enduring memory of the country, in terms of its socio-economic dynamics?

I’ll focus on the “economic” side of “socio-economic”, in keeping with the discussion so far.

One memory I have is of the entrepreneurial spirit of Ghanaians, how everyone is always trying to make something happen, even if it doesn’t result in great (or even good) financial returns. I think there might be a small-business for every man, woman and child in Ghana! There is a misconception in the West that Africans are waiting around to be “saved”, or something like that. But that’s not true at all. Most “common people” are busting their butts to make things happen.

The flip-side memory is probably that of visiting the Akosombo Dam on a trip, and spending the evening in the dark due to rolling blackouts – mere miles from Africa’s greatest hydro-electric dam! It was a depressing night, to say the least, thinking of the pitfalls in Ghanaian history, from Nkrumah to the present day, that led to that sad situation.

I think my overall feeling is somewhere in between these two memories. A feeling of people working very hard for not enough return, and of a country attempting to rise from under the restraints of an exploitative global trade system. Overall, it’s a hopeful feeling, but not one without pain.

Contact Rob:

Email: roblucastaylor(at)gmail.com
Websites: RobLucasTaylor.com, spread it like a roll of nickels

Jabulani - Rob Taylor

The grief you get
for every hitch and skip
you make, the way you flit
from strikers’ boots
and keepers’ clumsy mitts.

But Jabulani, your few
true moments, glory!
Gyan again, again!!

We hold our lead (and breath)
through every late-game
corner, praying only this:
one honest path tonight
from boot to Kingson’s rising fist.

Oh Jabulani,
the errors we’d forgive
for one last-second,
leaping, latex kiss!

"Jabulani" is part three of our impromptu tribute series to the Black Stars. Though the Black Stars' run is now over, we will keep posting new poems until July 9th. If you would like to contribute a tribute poem, send it to oneghanaonevoice(at)gmail.com.

100th Anniversary Poem: Child of Saturday - Rob Taylor

Kwame

Son of Nkroful,
son of the slave forts
and football in the fields before them.
Son of the schoolhouse,
of dusty Axim streets,
of cannons pointing all directions,
towards the sea
towards the village.

Kwame
the things that are done

A native son crosses the Atlantic
to a land deemed more palatable
for conquest, for the knowledge
you pull from University stacks
and place aside the histories of a people
whose land has already vanished,
who whisper from beneath the pavement
to go.

Kwame
the things that are done
in your name –

Slathered across the newspaper headlines,
this child of Saturday, son of Nkroful
a criminal, captive -
the walls of Ussher fort
a slave galley, a smallpox blanket
wrapped around your throat.
You wait, as you have been taught,
as you have practiced,
while children play in Axim’s fields
and cannons rust slowly on their mounts.

Kwame
the things that are done
in your name –
I mean, the things that are undone

Your people lift you up, out,
proclaim the land theirs,
its direction yours –
this child of Saturday,
this son of the schoolhouse,
you do not turn to address your people
but instead instruct the iron men on
how to bend without bursting.
You teach them how to walk again, to run –
you show them where to go.

Kwame
the things that are done
in your name –
I mean, the things that are undone
behind the flimsy façade of your name

You tore into the earth, it’s true,
and it trembled, betrayed,
yet understanding ‘what must be done.’
Helicopters chattered, gunships
patrolled the shores.
Child of Saturday, when you left
that last time, did you know?

Kwame
the things that are done
in your name –

They buried your body in Guinea,
the son of the slave forts.

I mean, the things that are undone

They returned your body to Nkroful,
the son of the schoolhouse.

behind the flimsy façade of your name

They trucked your body to the Capital
and placed it beneath a monument of stone.

Son of the slave forts,
son of the schoolhouse,
child of Saturday,
they’ve buried your body in a fortress
and stand behind its minarets,
cannons pointing all directions –
children below, bouncing victory and defeat
in black and white off their feet and foreheads
back and forth across the sprawling pitch.

Italicized lines are modified from the poem "Borrowed Airs" by Kobena Eyi Acquah. Read more poems on Nkrumah, from our "Nkrumah Series" of July 2008, here.

Author Profile - Rob Taylor

Biography:

Rob Taylor lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He lived in Accra in 2006-07 with his wife, Marta. His poetry has appeared in over thirty print and online magazines, and he has published two chapbooks, entitled splattered earth and Child of Saturday. He is the poetry editor at Red Fez.

Rob is a co-founder and editor of One Ghana, One Voice.

Contact Rob:

Email: roblucastaylor(at)gmail.com
Websites: RobLucasTaylor.com, spread it like a roll of nickels

Viciously in our throats - Rob Taylor

- Accra Hearts of Oak v. Ashanti Gold, Tema Sports Stadium


So close to this man
fevered and screaming
at the refs, the coaches,
the players (especially poor
Owu, the opposition’s keeper)
and now at the police officers
with their slick black batons
he is screaming at them
for blocking his view and
as he screams they swagger
towards us and more of us
join in until the whole
section is shouting and
they finally back off
though someone near us
throws an empty bottle
which nearly hits its mark
and we feel suddenly close
to a certain kind of death (a
stubborn form of life throbbing
viciously in our throats)
as the police officers walk
to the side, batons swinging
casually, and the keeper drops
the ball off his foot and away –

"Viciously in our throats" is part two of our four-part series of poems on soccer. Previous installments can be viewed from our Archive page.

Author Profile - Rob Taylor

Biography:

Rob Taylor lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He lived in Accra in 2006-07 with his wife, Marta. His poetry has appeared in over thirty print and online magazines, and he has published two chapbooks, entitled splattered earth and Child of Saturday. He is the poetry editor at Red Fez.

Rob is a co-founder and editor of One Ghana, One Voice.

Five Questions with Rob Taylor:

1. You capture the intensity on the field and in the stands very well in your poem. What part of a game of soccer do you enjoy most and which part do you vehemently dislike?

I enjoy the intensity in the stands the most, for sure, even if it is a little nerve-wracking at times. I like the idea of so many people and so much energy coming together for a common purpose, no matter how trivial that purpose may be. Nothing unites all of us across racial, cultural and social divides like football.

What I dislike most are the dishonourable actions we see these days (both on the pitch and in the stands). Faked injuries and fixed games on the pitch combined with racism and hooliganism in the stands, have gone a long way to taint the beautiful game.


2. "though someone near us/throws an empty bottle/which nearly hits its mark/and we feel suddenly close/to a certain kind of death (a /stubborn form of life throbbing /viciously in our throats)"

Violence during and after soccer games is on the ascendancy. Do you think this emanates from misguided passions of supporters or plain human penchant for mischief?

During games, I think that in large part it comes down to our limited understanding of the behaviour of big crowds in small spaces. I think this is especially true in Africa, where crowd controls (and, often, seating) are far more limited. I remember the panic I felt at times while working my way through the thick crowds at the Ghana @ 50 celebrations, something I’d never felt at a large event before. It’s easy to lose your head in that environment and start pushing and shoving. This is all the more true when you add the emotional intensity of a football game, where, on top of everything else, rival fans could be standing right next to you.

I’ve never been involved in a post-game fight, so I can’t really say why they happen (though at the end of the game written about in my poem, which was a 0-0 tie – a big victory for Ashgold - it looked like something might break out between the Hearts players and their disappointed fans!). That said, my guess is that it is mostly the standard vices of misguided passions, social/cultural/racial divides, and alcohol.


3. From the lessons of stadium tragedies in Ghana, do you think law enforcement officers are the part of the problem or are they ill-equipped to handle problems as they rise? If you had your way, how would you position law enforcement to ensure a smooth soccer game?

I think the first step is good stadium design. The game in the poem took place in Tema because of the upgrades being done to Accra’s stadium. In Tema, as in many smaller stadiums, the fans aren’t elevated above the pitch, so it was impossible for the officers to avoid being in the line of sight (and irritating the spectators). Likewise, when stadium tragedies break out, it is often in part the stadium’s fault because it has inadequate exits and too-narrow exit corridors. My understanding is that gates were locked, preventing escape, during the 2001 tragedy, for instance.

Officers certainly need to be better trained and equipped, also. But law enforcement in Ghana is in such sad shape that behaviour at football matches shouldn’t place too high on the list of needed improvements. Let’s tackle corruption first and move on from there!


4. The breathlessness of your poem is akin to a soccer player in pursuit of a ball. Did you write this poem on the spur of the moment or was it a regurgitation of an intense experience?

It certainly is based on a real experience. The poem is 100% factual, which is rare for me now that I think about it. I can’t remember exactly when I wrote it, but it was some time in the week following the match, so everything was still fresh in my mind.


5. On a light note, how good are your soccer skills in comparison to your fine poetry?

Oh, I’m lousy. I remember my first time going to Tema with a friend to play. My eyes almost fell out of my head - those boys were so good! No wonder Canada is 57 spots behind Ghana in the FIFA rankings.

As for how it compares to my poetry, I don’t know. Not that many people have both read my poetry and played football against me. Maybe if someone sets up a poet’s football league some time down the road we can find out for sure!

Contact Rob:

Email: roblucastaylor(at)gmail.com
Websites: RobLucasTaylor.com, spread it like a roll of nickels

Under the Harmattan Sky - Rob Taylor

Dust blows in from the Sahara,
blanketing the town.
We can hardly see each other
so we take no photos,
write no poems.

Under the Harmattan sky
we barely notice the fishing boats
lined with thin men whose
thick fingers haul the seabed
up and onto the deck
to rummage and pry,
turn over in calloused hands,
save the best parts for the market,
send the rest drifting back
down into the sea.

Photo © 2009 Marta Taylor

Author Profile - Rob Taylor

Biography:

Rob Taylor lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He is a graduate of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. His poetry has appeared in over thirty print and online magazines, and he has published two chapbooks, entitled splattered earth and Child of Saturday. He is the poetry editor at Red Fez.

He lived in Ghana with his wife, Marta, from September 2006 until March 2007.

Rob is a co-founder and editor of One Ghana, One Voice.

Five Questions with Rob Taylor:

1.What made you write about the Harmattan and of what significance is it to the reader?

I wrote this poem in early 2007, after the Harmattan had been in effect for quite some time. My wife and I had travelled to Takoradi to see the town and, because of the Harmattan, visibility was very limited. At the time, I was writing a lot of descriptive poems on the things that I saw, and on that visit to Takoradi I was hardly able to see anything! So I was frustrated by that, which inspired the poem.

As for the effect on the reader, of course I cannot know. My guess though is that it depends upon the reader’s knowledge of the Harmattan. I think if you’ve never experienced the Harmattan it may seem in this poem to be only an irritant – a “mask” or “veil” over a world you wish to see clearly. If you’ve lived with the Harmattan, though, I think the significance is more nuanced: it is still an irritant, but you know also that the Harmattan brings with it cooler weather, which makes it pleasing at the same time. I think this adds an element of pleasure to the image: that there is something strangely satisfying about the “mask.”


2. What is the link you see between fishing and the Harmattan?

For me this goes back to the theme of the last answer: mystery. In a sense, the Harmattan makes the land as murky as the churning sea. The land, obviously, is something that we have spent more time exploring as a species, while the sea still contains many great unknowns. I think the Harmattan levels the playing field a bit between the two, making it as hard for a poet to spot something to write about as it is for a fisherman to nab a fish in the sea, maybe harder...


3. Do you think Ghanaian poetry has a future on the international scene?

Of course, and a present too! I have no concerns about that at all. Ghana, like most countries, can, and I'm sure will, produce a few breakout poetry stars (like Awoonor, Anyidoho, etc. of old) that will keep Ghana in the international eye.

Personally, though, I think that’s the easy part. More important than Ghanaian poetry’s place on the international cultural scene is poetry’s place on the Ghanaian cultural scene. Having a few successful writers internationally, but little infrastructure domestically to support and nourish new poets is a recipe for an eventual collapse.

If Ghana is going to become the permanent hotbed of poetry talent that we all know it can be, we need a vibrant internal community of writers and readers. We need networks of educators, magazines, and active audiences if the poetry movement is going to grow, maintain itself and prosper. To me, that is the priority.


4. What informs your writing style?

I believe in poetry as a form of communication which comes into play when our other modes of communication fail. When a list or essay or prose piece of some other sort simply can’t touch upon the ideas or feelings we are trying to communicate, we turn to poetry to try and fill in the gap.

Because poetry is, for me, at heart a form a communication, I believe it should be as clear and direct as possible. Obviously, it can’t be completely plain like a list or an instruction manual. No, it has to be complicated or mysterious to some extent in order for it to stretch the mind of the reader – to take the reader to a place they wouldn’t have gone if they’d read an essay on the topic, for instance. But it shouldn’t be so complicated or mysterious that it loses its ability to communicate.

In secondary school, my teachers would often attempt to explain what a poem meant by saying: “X poem is saying Y and Z”. Well, if that is true, then it would be much more efficient to write “Y and Z” instead of bothering with the poem at all, no? Of course, most of the time, it’s not true – the poem can’t really be reduced to a simple statement or even a complex list of statements – but occasionally it is. Sometimes I find poems, especially very complicated poems, are more like math problems than art. They are jumbles of ideas that need to be untangled, but once they are untangled, you see that there is no magic there, no leaping, no stretching of the reader’s mind.

From all of this I take the following notion to inform my writing style: be as clear and direct as possible without losing the mystery. I struggle with this as much as any other writer, but I try to return to the idea as much as possible. Many poets on OGOV do this wonderfully, and help keep me focused and grounded in my task.


5. What inspired you to come up with this poem?

Well, as mentioned above, the Harmattan and my frustrations over the writer’s block that it produced were a big part of it. Also, watching fishermen work over many months. Their knowledge and skill in their craft were often mesmerizing – another type of magic to behold!

Contact Rob:

Email: roblucastaylor(at)gmail.com
Websites: RobLucasTaylor.com, spread it like a roll of nickels

at makola - Rob Taylor

- for Millicent, upon the street clearing of Accra, February 2007.

at makola women earn pennies porting twice their weight on their heads, their thin sandals sliding just over the thick concrete cloth draped and folded delicately atop the panting earth. at makola smallboys clip toenails and dig knives into the fleshy corners, scrape out filings of dirt and blow them off their glinting blades then open their palms meekly to the shadows. at makola old men sell tabloids on rape, incest, priests and politicians for fifty cents a pop, old women sell live crayfish and crabs in metal bowls, keep them at bay with long wooden sticks. at makola children in uniforms move briskly through corridors, hold books tight against their chests as they wind their way home. at makola the invisible rich extend hands out lowered tinted windows to buy bread and rice from bruised, scrambling saleswomen. at makola the streets are shut down every saturday for funerals to men who died months earlier and the market whirls in red and black kente, mourners dancing slowly, hawkers behind them sweating over crates of beer and minerals. at makola half the stalls are built illegally and many of the market women are smuggled in from war zones. at makola people talk of business, football, america – people yell and shake. at makola vendors are starting to complain, the police are getting anxious – someone is going to die, though there may not be bullets or blood. at makola the shops will close and reopen, will be torn down and rebuilt – lives will be buried and excavated. at makola the earth will again shed its clothes, lay itself down amongst the swirling throng, disappear, and wait to be remembered.

Author Profile - Rob Taylor

Biography:

Rob Taylor lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He is a graduate of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. His poetry has appeared in numerous print and online magazines, and he has published a chapbook, entitled splattered earth. He is a co-founder of SFU's High Altitude Poetry, and an editor at Red Fez.

He lived in Ghana with his partner, Marta, from September 2006 until March 2007. His chapbook manuscript of poems from Ghana, entitled child of saturday, is currently seeking a publisher.

The poem "at makola" appeared previously in The New Chief Tongue.

Rob is a co-founder of One Ghana, One Voice.

Five Questions with Rob Taylor:

1. What made you write about Makola?

I wrote "at makola" in February 2007, as the street-clearing in downtown Accra (in preparation for the Ghana @ 50 celebrations) was in full swing. I did much of my shopping at the time at Makola and many of the vendors I had gotten to know quite well suddenly disappeared.

The poem wasn't so much written in response to the street-clearing, though that is referenced at the end, instead it was more that the street-clearing got me thinking about Makola, about what was being destroyed in the name of "cleanliness."


2. As a Canadian by birth and an African at heart, what changes do you reckon you've brought to the poetry society in Africa?

Ha! Not very many. I think all of us here at OGOV have accomplished something good, but it is only a small step in a very long journey. It is exciting, though, to see all the budding talent we've been able to profile, who will serve as leaders in the coming stages.


3. How different is poetry in Canada from what you see and saw in Ghana, since you've had the privilege of staying in both places?

Privilege is the right word in both cases, as each is an incredible country whose people and landscape have shaped who I am.

Canadian poetry is much more established. There are large numbers of university programs, journals and awards. In part because there are so many institutions and publications promoting poetry, there is a good amount of high-quality poetry published in Canada. Sadly though, what is more often published is over-workshopped, over-polished poetry that says very little, and that has a negligible effect on the Canadian population in general.

I think it is the exact opposite in Ghana. There are few university programs, journals, etc. Because of that, and because of high illiteracy rate, many people never approach poetry at all. Those who do, however, are brimming with a pure passion, if not necessarily technical know-how, for what they do.

The overall quality of the writing produced in Ghana may currently be lower than that in Canada, but it is also far more accessible and relevant to the Ghanaian population than Canadian poetry is to Canadians. This is a firm base upon which to build a new generation of Ghanaian verse.


4. What are your plans for the coming years as far as OGOV is concerned?

I don't have big plans for OGOV - if we are still alive in a few years I'll be happy!

From the start, I never wanted OGOV to dominate the poetry scene in Ghana, but instead to provide inspiration for others to start new projects and take the lead. This is part of why discussions like our latest Roundtable Discussion are so important.

Already, many poets are setting up personal websites and submitting to international publications, in part through our encouragement here at OGOV. Next, hopefully, new projects will begin springing up, such as a reading series or a print journal. Specifically there, I'd love to see Legon's long defunct literary journal The Legacy revived by students there - and if anyone is interested in that, I'd be happy to lend a hand.


5. How best do you think we can improve upon conditions in markets in Ghana, considering what you saw in Makola?

I think the key is to look at markets like Makola as symptoms of larger problems - as barometers of social and economic wellbeing. Often, people work in the markets because they cannot get work elsewhere, and people shop in the markets because they cannot afford to shop elsewhere.

No permanent solutions ever come from "cleaning up" market areas - they reappear later in either the same place or elsewhere. Instead, clearing markets gives people a false sense of progress, and ultimately delays real action from being taken on the issues that keep so many Ghanaians in poverty.

Contact Rob:

Email: roblucastaylor(at)gmail.com
Website: rollofnickels.blogspot.com

Rob's Past Profiles:

Issue 1.13, June 16th - 22nd, 2007

five hours from tamale, back of the bus - Rob Taylor

perhaps this is joy or perhaps the delusions of pain
though it hardly seems to matter which
because i am smiling and the girl across the aisle,
body contorted, like my own,
around farm animals and furniture and kitchenware,
is smiling too –
a kindred emotion jutting up from the potholes,
through the wheel well and bus bench to her tailbone,
and finally through her rattling lips and out.

in solidarity, i compose a poem for her in my mind,
pledge to write it down once we disembark
and regain the use of our limbs
though i know it will no longer be the same poem,
and her name will have been jostled from my memory.

so i dedicate this, instead, to all the nameless girls of my life –
not the poem i am composing but the feeling that is swelling
through my hips and bouncing violently up my spine
which is perhaps joy or the delusions of pain,
though it hardly seems to matter now which.

Author Profile - Rob Taylor

Biography:

Rob Taylor lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He is a graduate of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. His poetry has appeared in numerous print and online magazines, and he has published a chapbook, entitled splattered earth. He is a co-founder of SFU's High Altitude Poetry.

He lived in Ghana with his partner, Marta, from September 2006 until March 2007. His chapbook manuscript of poems from Ghana, entitled child of saturday, is currently seeking a publisher.

The poem five hours from tamale, back of the bus appeared previously in the January 2007 issue of High Altitude Poetry.

Rob is a co-founder of One Ghana, One Voice.

Five Questions with Rob Taylor:

1. How long have you been writing poetry?

I’ve been writing since 2001 and working to get my poems published since 2004.


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

The two writers who, in high school, first got me interested in poetry were Robert Frost and Paul Simon. Currently, my favorite poets include Al Purdy, Charles Bukowski, Carl Sandburg, Kobena Eyi Acquah, Langston Hughes, Aislinn Hunter, Billy Collins, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Liam Ford, Jenn Ku, and Mariner Janes. Since starting this site that list has expanded to include Julian Adomako-Gyimah, Vida Ayitah, and others. Amongst that list, the poets that have most influenced my own writing style would be Purdy, Sandburg, Collins, Ford and Janes.


3. You are a Canadian, right? So why the strong interest in promoting poetry on Ghana, and Africa, for that matter?

I lived in Accra with my partner, Marta, for seven months (September 2006 to March 2007). During my time in Accra one of the things I wanted to do most was find other writers who could inspire and encourage me, and vice versa. I had great difficulty doing this, however, and found myself very isolated as a writer. This was additionally frustrating to me because when it came to other passions in my life, especially football, there were easily accessible, lively communities that I could get involved with.

As I continued to study Ghanaian literature, I learned just how vibrant a writing community there has been in Ghana in the past. Everyone knows the big names of the 60s and 70s: Kofi Awoonor, Efua Sutherland, etc. But who are the big names now? Where is the next generation of writers? I couldn’t find them anywhere.

With the writer’s community appearing to me to be so weak, I wanted to do something to help, and upon meeting Julian we were spurred to set up this site as one very small contribution to the re-construction of Ghana’s writing community.


4. What impact do you think poetry and poets can have on the socio-cultural setting and politics in Ghana?

One thing I love about Ghanaian poetry is how overtly political it often is. Many of the poems on this site, such as “This Is The Time”, “Portrait” and "Atonement" have tackled political issues head on. This is very rarely, if ever, attempted in North America, especially in Canada. Because of this, I think Ghanaian poetry has a greater potential to influence the minds of the public, and of the decision-makers themselves, than North American poetry.

Ghanaian poets usually seem to be trying to tell their readers something – to communicate an idea or a strong emotion. In North America, it is often hard to tell whether authors are considering their audience at all, which makes their writing far more isolated and unable to influence their society.

That being said, do I think the impact of poetry and poets on Ghanaian society is currently great? Not at all. But I think it has the potential to be great, so long as talented poets keep writing and promoting their work, and keep building and expanding upon a community of interested readers.


5. What is the way forward for Ghanaian and African poets? In other words, how do you see Ghanaian poets within the next few years?

I feel that it’s not my place to suggest a way forward. Granted, I would like to see One Ghana, One Voice play a role in the development of a stronger Ghanaian writing community, but only a peripheral role. Ghanaian organizations such as the Pan-African Writers Association and The Writers Fund of Ghana, along with strong-minded and talented individuals, are the ones who are doing the most important work, and who should take the lead going forward.

Beyond suggesting any particular direction, what I would like to see is more action: more participation and more conversations between writers. Who knows where those conversations will take Ghanaian poetry, but I, for one, look forward to watching it happen.

Contact Rob:

Email: email.rob.taylor(at)gmail.com
Website: rollofnickels.blogspot.com