Atukwei Okai

Biography

Atukwei Okai was born in 1941 in Accra, Ghana. His first collection of poems, Flowerfall, was published in June 1969. His other collections include Oath of the Fontonfrom and Other Poems (1971), Lorgorligi: Logarithms and Other Poems (1974), Freedom Symphony: Selected and New Love Poems (2008) and Mandela the Spear and Other Poems (2013). Okai’s poems have been translated into several languages and anthologized over the years. Rooted in oral tradition, his writings have been recognized as having Pan-Africanist vision. In 1961, on a scholarship from the government of President Kwame Nkrumah, he went to Moscow, where he earned his MA at Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in 1967. He later received his M.Phil from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London in 1971. He was Secretary-General of the Pan African Writers' Association in 1989. Okai died in 2018 in Accra.

Birth Date

1941-03-15

Place of Birth

Death Date

2018-07-13

Place of Death

Accra, Ghana

Ga

Country of Nationality

Ghana

Languages Spoken

Twi, English, Dagbani, Mamprulli

Gorky Literary Institute, University College London

Poetry Collections

Flowerfall (London: Writers' Forum. London, 1969); Oath of the Fontonfrom and Other Poems (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971); Lorgorligi: Logarithms and Other Poems (Ghana Publishing Corporation, 1974); Freedom Symphony: Selected and New Love Poems (Ghana Publishing Company, 2008); Mandela the Spear and Other Poems (Johannesburg: African Perspectives, 2013)

Sources

“Atukwei Okai.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 30 Jan. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atukwei_Okai. Accessed 4 February 2022. “Profile of the Late Prof Atukwei Okai.” GhanaWeb, 14 July 2018, https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Profile-of-the-late-Prof-Atukwei-Okai-668610. Accessed 4 February 2022. “Prof. Atukwei Okai.” The HACSA, Heritage And Cultural Society of Africa, https://thehacsa.org/hacsa-profile/board/prof-atukwei-okai-profile/. Accessed 4 February 2022. Okai, Atukwei, and Gheysika Agambila. “Atukwei Okai in Conversation with Gheysika Agambila (2018).” Obsidian, vol. 44, no. 2, Board of Trustees of Illinois State University. Accessed 4 February 2022.