Adjei Agyei-Baah is the
co-founder of the Africa Haiku Network, editor of Mamba Journal on Haikus,
judge of the #Babishai2016 Babishaiku Competition and guest at the
#Babishai2016 Poetry Festival in August.
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Adjei Agyei-Baah (Courtesy photo)
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Babishai is so pleased that
you took up the position as judge for our inaugural Haiku competition, or
Babishaiku. As the co-founder of the Africa Haiku Network, which you
co-founded with Emmanuel Jessie Kalusian, you hold strong values connecting
Haiku to African language. Share a few please.
Yes, Africa can ‘nativise’, and even translate and write haiku in our widely
spoken indigenous languages like Swahili/ Kiswahili etc... in order to become
part of our literature thought at schools and colleges. But I think connecting
haiku to only our language would display a limited role and benefit and would
be appropriate if extended to embrace our culture and values in its entirety.
In fact, I still see haiku among the less explored arts that Africa can take advantage
of in telling her story. Its brevity and power of delight can easily cause
people to stop and read,especially in this technological age where people have
limited time,to read lengthy texts and images generated by the various
applications and social media platforms. In such situation, haiku then becomes
a teaser or bait to entice people to pause and read for a moment.
Surely, haiku can be used to record our daily observations and
happenings in our environment. For instance the haiku below captures the
pitiful sight of the deplorable state most Africa’s railway networks, which
presently have their tracks going rusty, compared to the advanced Germany’s Sky
and Japan’s Bullet Trains, which travel at lightning speed:
end
of road—/railway truck runs/ into earth
And
by this simple haiku, awareness can be created for people in authority to give
such as state the needed attention or becomes a call toinvestors to come
downto salvage the situation:
Similarlya haiku can be used to tell
Africa’shistory to the generation yet to come, be it good or bad. In the haiku
below, I share a rich historical experience with readers on my visit to the
Cape Coast Castle in Ghana (formerly called the Gold Coast), where the colonial
masters left forts and castles as colonial monuments after the collapse of
slave trade that have become haunting structures of terror showcasing to some
of the atrocities committed against the black race.
On top of these castles, remain
their planted cannons, mockingly acting as sign-posts, pointing the direction
were they came in and the route where they exited:
castle
cannons― /pointing where/ their owners gone by
Indeed, haiku as art has so many
benefits to Africa but would prefer to speak extensively about it some other
time to come.
The Mamba Journal is Africa’s
first single Haiku publication. How have audiences responded to it so far?
Response have been so far great, in
fact we received congratulatory messages from almost all international haiku
journal editors/ founders like Shamrock, Heron’s Nest, Cat tails, Paper Wasp,
Modern Haiku etc. and other haiku societies and lovers around the world. In
fact, they were happy for our feat, in finding Africa a spot on the world haiku
map. But from Africa have been few messages since the haiku art is not much
known and even seasoned poets and academic institution have not been practicing
it. Prof. Wole Soyinka was happy about our historic breakthrough and sent us
his first haiku which we hope to publish in our 2nd edition, if
he grants us permission.
Do you write Haiku in any other language apart from English?
Yes, I have often translated my
haiku into my mother tongue, Twi, the widest spoken language in Ghana.
Fortunately for me, some of my haiku(s) have also been translated into
Japanese, Romania, Russia, French and German. But I have the intention of
translating my upcoming collection “Afriku” into Swahili and other
international languages such as French, Spanish and Chinese for these countries
to also experience and appreciate our unique seasons and settings outside their
own.
Ghana is heavily invested
in the arts. Which arts and culture events do you always attend while there,
and why?
I am devotee of poetry and spoken
word, for I see these two art as channels to create social awareness, as a
means of talking about the corruption and bribery in high places, the church
taking advantage of poor, the commoner overburdened with taxes and also as a
mean of providing entertainment to ward off our daily stress.
How
important is it, in your opinion, to conduct poetry competitions for Africans
living in Africa?
It is a smart way of telling the African
story by Africans themselves to their unborn generations, rather than leaving it in the hands of foreigners who may record it with ugliness.
It’s like making an effort to define oneself before someone else does it
for him.
You have been a judge
before for a Haiku competition. Describe that experience.
Nope, this is my first time, but would say as a co-editor and aficionado of haiku, I have regularly been
mentoring and editing chunk haiku everyday. The difficult part has always been
sending a “rejection” mail to a submitter, it has always been quite hard. You
have go about it in a “fine” way so as not extinguish the feeble fire of
first-timers. Most at times too, there are friends, who want to take advantage
of their friendship with you, to force you to accept “anything” they pen as
haiku for publication. And here is where I stand my grounds, since a good
editor need to be a bit ruthless, so as to separate the chaffs from the grain.
Do you use Haiku to woo
women?
Eish… I wish I could but not in its
wrong sense but would rather want to entice them with it. In fact when it comes
to haiku in Africa, its rather unfortunate that only few women are doing it.On
the international scene, I can only point two heads, Celestine Nudanu (from
Ghana) and Nshai Waluzimba (from Zambia) who are devotees and have received
commendation for some of their haiku pieces.
What diet is best for
poets, in your opinion?
Hmmm, this is quite a tough one.
Honestly I am stuck here. But I will recommend any food that ward-off stress
and make them stay up refreshed at night and write their heart out.
At the Babishai Poetry Festival
this year, what three things do you expect?
I expect to meet new young African
poets, not the same old faces we already know. A little freshness, will surely
spice up the show. I hope to see a lot of books, more especially anthologies to
get know of what is happening in the world of poetry in other Africa countries,
most especially from East Africa. I think my people back home will be delighted
to know about it and will as well love to witness some performances which I
will personally love to perform one or two poems from my upcoming collection
“Embers of Fireflies”.
Any
parting remarks?
Thanks for this opportunity to share
my thoughts with the world, in my quest to promote Africa to find her rightful
place of the World haiku map.
Thank you
The #Babishai2016 poetry festival runs from 24-26 August in Kampala. Contact us
at festival@babishainiwe.com
