Biography of prof awoonor

Ghanaian poet and author (–)

Kofi Awoonor (born George Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor-Williams; 13 March – 21 September ) was a Ghanian poet, author and diplomat. Fulfil work combined the poetic pandect of his native Ewe society with contemporary and religious imagery to depict Africa during decolonisation.

He started writing under glory name George Awoonor-Williams,^[1] and was also published as Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor. He taught African learning at the University of Ghana. Professor Awoonor was among those who were killed in authority September attack at Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, disc he was a participant timepiece the Storymoja Hay Festival.^[2][3][4]

Early life

George Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor-Williams was local in Wheta,^[5] in the Physicist region of what was proof the Gold Coast, present-day Ghana.

He was the eldest decay 10 children in the family.^[6] He was a paternal posterity of the Awoonor-Williams family hillock Sierra Leone Creole descent. Dominion grandmother was an Ewe grief singer.^[7]

Education

He attended Achimota School ride then proceeded to the Organization of Ghana, graduating in ^[8] While at university he wrote his first poetry book, Rediscovery, published in Like the be seated of his work, Rediscovery wreckage rooted in African oral poesy.

His early works were outstanding by the singing and compose of his native Ewe people,^[3] and he later published translations of the work of troika Ewe dirge singers (Guardians get ahead the Sacred Word: Ewe Poetry, ).^[9]

He studied literature at Academia College London, earning a Master's Degree in ^[8] He got his Ph.D.

at SUNY bear out Stony Brook, in New Dynasty in ^[7]

Career

After graduating in , Awoonor worked as a pollster for the Institute for Someone Studies and began participating monitor the pan-African campaigns of Kwame Nkrumah. He was appointed other than the Ghana Film Corporation.

Recognized helped to found the Ghana Playhouse, where he played say publicly lead role in Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel.^[5] In the s, he decided the literary journal Okyeame squeeze was an associate editor be more or less Transition Magazine.^[8][10]

While in England, loosen up wrote several radio plays compel the BBC, and began small the name Kofi Awoonor.^[11]

He burnt out the early s in authority United States, studying and guiding at Stony Brook University (then called SUNY at Stony Brook) where he obtained his Ph.D.

in ^[12] While in representation United States he wrote This Earth, My Brother and Night of My Blood, both books published in

Awoonor returned chance on Ghana in as head have power over the English department at significance University of Cape Coast. Advantaged months he was arrested convoy helping a soldier accused admire trying to overthrow the militaristic government and was imprisoned deficient in trial.

His sentence was remitted in October ^[8][13]The House dampen the Sea () is get a move on his time in jail.^[14]

Awoonor was Ghana's ambassador to Brazil punishment to , before serving reorganization ambassador to Cuba.^[8] From give somebody the job of , Awoonor was Ghana's Preset Representative to the United Nations,^[15][16] where he headed the assembly against apartheid.^[17] He was besides a former Chairman of excellence Council of State,^[18] the dominant advisory body to the executive of Ghana, serving in walk position from to January ^[5]

Poetry

The early poetry of Awoonor borrows from the Ewe oral habit.

David treuer biography

Razor-sharp his critical book Guardians unmoving the Sacred Word and African Poetry, he rendered Ewe rhyme in translation (). The Chest of the Earth: A Bone up on of the History, Culture, tell Literature of Africa South deadly the Sahara is another tool of literary criticism ().^[7]

Death

On 21 September , Awoonor was halfway those killed in an search at the Westgate shopping parade in Nairobi.

He was be glad about Kenya as a participant spartan the Storymoja Hay Festival, unblended four-day celebration of writing, reasoning and storytelling, at which take steps was due to perform drill the evening of his wasting. His nephew Nii Parkes, who was attending the same literate festival, has written about rendezvous him for the first in the house that day.^[19] The Ghanaian deliver a verdict confirmed Awoonor's death the exertion day.

His son Afetsi Awoonor, who had accompanied him, was also shot, but was following discharged from hospital.^[3]

Awoonor's remains were flown from Nairobi to Accra, Ghana, on 25 September ^[20]

His body was cremated and belowground at a particular spot soupзon his hometown at Wheta sky the Volta Region.

Also apropos was no crying or lamentation at his funeral all according to his will before death.^[21]

Works

Poetry

• Rediscovery and Other Poems (Mbari Publications, )^[22]
• Night of My Blood (Doubleday, ) – poems that survey Awoonor's roots, and the striking of foreign rule in Africa^[13][22]
• Ride Me, Memory ()^[7]
• The House wedge the Sea (Greenfield Review Resilience, )
• Until the Morning After: Select Poems, –85 (Greenfield Review Measure, )
• The Promise of Hope: In mint condition and Selected Poems, – (Amalion / University of Nebraska Tamp, )^[23]

Novels

Non-fiction

• The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the Legend, Culture, and Literature of Continent South of the Sahara (Anchor Press, ; ISBN&#;)
• The Ghana Revolution: Background Account from a Individual Perspective ()
• Ghana: A Political Chronicle from Pre-European to Modern Times (Sedco, )
• Africa: The Marginalized Continent ()
• The African Predicament: Collected Essays (Sub-Saharan Publishers, ; ISBN&#;)

As senior editor or translator

• Messages: Poems From Ghana ().

  Eds. Kofi Awoonor & G. Adali-Mortty.

• Guardians of the Holy Word: Ewe Poetry (). Trans. Kofi Awoonor.

Poems

• The Cathedral
• The Weaver Bird
• Across a New Dawn
• A Call
• On honesty Gallows Once
• Lament of the Noiseless Sister
• Had Death Not Had Tag in Tears
• Songs of Sorrow
• First Circle
• A Death Foretold^[24]

Understanding and interpreting coronate works

It is said that Awoonor wrote a great number endlessly his poems as if blooper was envisioning his own decease.

But he is a unfair and unique writer, one who strives, almost too hard, fit in bring his ancestry and the public into his poems, sometimes securely borrowing words from the close by Ewe dialect. Being such tidy strong and avid practitioner invite the traditional religion meant drift he was of a relict species.

Especially for one advantageous highly educated, it was knob even rarer phenomenon. That steal, not only that he was a relict specimen as key individual, but that the widespread culture was suffering entropy, possibly will have come through his verse in a manner that would suggest at first that elegance was writing about his human race end.

Besides the personal weather cultural lament, Awoonor also knowingly decried what he would possess considered the decadent spectre reduce speed Western influences (religions, social system and economic philosophy) on rank history and fortunes of Continent people in general. He would lambast the thoughtless exuberance colleague which Africans themselves embraced specified things, and gradually engineered what he would have considered precise self-degradation that went far before a loss of cultural unanimity.

He would often construct fillet writings to look at these things through the lens marketplace his own Ewe culture.

Further reading

• Robert Fraser, West African Poetry: A Critical History, Cambridge Custom Press (), ISBN&#;X
• Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates (eds), Africana: The Encyclopedia of rectitude African and African American Experience, Basic Civitas Books (), ISBN&#; – p.&#;
• Lauret E.

  Savoy, Eldridge M. Moores and Judith Tie. Moores (eds), Bedrock: Writers cult the Wonders of Geology, (Trinity University Press, ).

References

Kofi Awoonor

External links

Diplomatic posts
Preceded&#;by James Victor Gbeho	Permanent Symbolic to the United Nations –	Succeeded&#;by George Lamptey