Kofi Anyidoho

The Word Behind Bars and the Paradox of Exile grew out of a workshop that brought together a group of African writers, including many who suffered imprisonment in their home countries and/or exile abroad. For some, the workshop prompted their first attempt to write about their experiences and to compare them with others whose life and art had come under similar constraints. This collection represents their assessments--in prose, poetry, and drama--of the many facets of the exile experience. The papers are as graphic, eloquent, and thought-provoking as they are varied in their subject matter and mode of communication. A powerful fusion of the personal and the political, The Word Behind Bars and the Paradox of Exile offers a timely perspective on conditions of literary production in many parts of Africa today.

The Word Behind Bars and the Paradox of Exile

James Gibbs

Includes articles, annotated filmography, interviews, creative writing, and book reviews.

Contemporary Ghanaian Literature, Theatre and Film

FonTomFrom

In memory of all the Ancestral Voices who prepared the field for our SeedTime... SeedTime I brings together Selected Poems from Kofi Anyidoho's first five collections, beginning in reverse order with poems from AncestralLogic & CaribbeanBlues (1993), A Harvest of Our Dreams (1984), EarthChild (1985), Elegy for the Revolution (1978), and BrainSurgery (1985). BrainSurgery, the earliest of these collections, was never published as a collection until it came out together with EarthChild (Woeli Publishing Services, 1985), even though several of the poems had appeared in various journals, magazines and anthologies. SeedTime: Selected Poems I is a backward glance to those magical years of birth waters flowing across a landscape filled at once with danger and hope, with dying and rebirth in the mystery and miracle of new beginnings so soon after countless brushfires. But the doubt returns again so close behind the hope as we offer trembling prayers in new poems from an old loom: See What They've Done To Our SunRise. Yet, somehow, we must open our minds and souls to the Forever Promise of New SeedTimes. This world cannot, must not crumble under our watch. "Quintessential Anyidoho...a harvest of the master craftman's gems across time and space. SeedTime brings a refreshing newness to old songs, and, for new ones, a touch of creative genius we have come to associate with the poet's pedigree; a timeless legacy of a poet-laureate, whose voice waxes even stronger in his twilight years." - Mawuli Adjei, author, poet and literary scholar "A collection of haunting poems in which we SEE the turbulent variety of our history, and HEAR the English language teased to express the many rhythms of the African's eternal homesickness." - Prof. A. N. Mensah, Department of English, University of Ghana

Selected Poems I

SeedTime

Ancestrallogic & Caribbeanblues

Poems

Earthchild, with Brain Surgery

Elegy for the Revolution

Abena P. A. Busia

Anne V. Adams

Even in the best of times, the artist is constantly reaching beyond the present; the severity of Africa's present situation of crisis must urge our artists even farther into their version of a new life. In Beyond Survival, some of the best interpreters of African Literature focus on the role of the creative artist as a critical assessor, confidence builder and inspirer to excellence.The central theme of this important collection of essays in inspired by the belief that given the severity of the current crisis of life for African peoples, and given the intuitive and cultivated ability of the creative artist to monitor and accurately capture the complexities of any human institution, close attention to the world of African and African-heritage writers should provide not only important insights into various dimensions of the problem, but also and perhaps even more crucial, subtle but reliable pointers to probable solutions. More than any other group of people, it is perhaps to the artists we must turn for a creative but ultimately realizable vision of the future.The contributors fall under five broad headings, beginning with an introductory section featuring three important addresses delivered during the 1994 ALA annual conference in Accra, Ghana, at which these papers were first presented, as well a specially commissioned essay in memory of the late Flora Nwapa, one of Africa's best known pioneer women writers. The four other sections present a total of twenty essays focussing on: Shifting Paradigms; New Life: Language and Artistic Tradition; New Life: Language, Literature & National Policy; and Resistance Strategies.

African Literature & the Search for New Life

Beyond Survival

Helen Lauer

This compilation was inspired by an international symposium held on the Legon campus in September 2003. Hosted by the CODESRIA African Humanities Institute Programme, the symposium had the theme 'Canonical Works and Continuing Innovation in African Arts & Humanities'.

Kofi Anyidoho

About

Books

Join the club