A Survey of African Poetry in the London Times, Sunday Times, Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement 1865-1985

A Commentary on the Representation of Ama Ata Aidoo’s Poetic Career within The Sunday Times, The Times Literary Supplement, and Financial Times

Ama Ata Aidoo is the accomplished poet of four poetry collections: Someone Talking to Sometime (1985), An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems (1992), Birds and Other Poems (1993), and After The Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems (2017). Despite her prolific poetry career, she is primarily known and recognized for her novels and plays—Changes: A Love Story, Our Sister Killjoy, and The Dilemma of a Ghost and Anowa are only a few. In fact, so overshadowed are her poetic pursuits that over a thirty-five-year period—from 1965 to 2000—within three of the most established British news publications of the last century, her poetry goes largely unmentioned.

 Ama Ata Aidoo is a Ghanaian poet born in Saltpond in 1940. After receiving her secondary school education at Wesley Girls, one of the most prestigious secondary schools in Ghana, she attended the University of Ghana, Legon where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English (Kumavie 58). She went on to write her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, in 1964 which was published by the British publishing house, Longman, thus beginning an extensive connection with the English literary scene similar to the one shared by many of her contemporaries who were published series such as the Heinemann African Writers.

In The Sunday Times, The Times Literary Supplement,and the Financial Times, Aidoo is primarily represented in reviews, blurbs, and announcements about her novels and plays. In a review of Unbecoming Daughters of an Empire which appears in the The Times Literary Supplement on April 9, 1993, Aidoo is described as a novelist. In a review of The Development of African Drama published on January 14, 1983, Aidoo is unsurprisingly portrayed as a playwright. In the twenty-nine times Aidoo appears in these publications, she is represented over a three-decade period as a prose writer and a playwright. The one mention of her poetry is still in the context of her novel. In a blurb of Our Sister Killjoy, appearing in an installment of The Sunday Times on May 22, 1988, the book’s mixture of prose and poetry is referenced, but without any grounding background about her past poetic contributions.

The invisibility of Aidoo’s poetry career can be credited to her establishment as a playwright and novelist prior to her release of any poetry collections. In 1964, as mentioned above, her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, was released. This was followed by her second play, Anowa, in 1970, and in the same year, her first prose contribution, No Sweetness Here: A collection of Short Stories. It wasn’t until two decades into her literary career that she produced her first full-length collection of poetry. Despite what seems like an extensive time lag, Helen Yitah, author and Professor at University of Ghana, describes life as a poet as Aidoo’s original ambition in the foreword to Aidoo’s most recent collection, After the Ceremonies (x). “Aidoo’s poetry occupies an important place in her oeuvre because even though most of her poems were published after she had established herself as a writer… writing poetry was her childhood dream, and she wrote poems and won prizes for them before she began writing in other genres” (x), Yitah writes.

 Similarly to her work in other genres, Aidoo’s poetry explores a wide range of personal, cultural, and political commitments. Her poems engage with the immigrant experiences of people living in the West; nationalist, anti-imperialist, black consciousness, and female activist politics; and issues of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. A classic example of Aidoo’s more political leanings can be found in her poem “As the Dust Begins to Settle” which offers a critique of capitalism and neoliberalism along with their embedded notions of privatization and divestiture (Aidoo 14). Her poem “Fantse” explores the immigrant longing for home (x). “In For My Mother in Her Mid-90s,”Aidoo offers a loving ode to her mother (6), getting in touch with her personal side. Across her poems, her commitment to women and feminism are also apparent. Aidoo, widely regarded as one of the pioneering women writers of her time, unfolds the issues and plight of women in her poems.

The absence of Aidoo’s poetic achievements within the media documentation of her work naturally raises questions of consequence: what is at stake with this omission? In addition to the diminishing effect on her overall body of work and a holistic understanding of her as a writer, the absence of her poetry also has far-reaching implications for future generations of African poets. As one of only a few African writers of her time, Aidoo undoubtedly serves as a figure of representation, of inspiration. Through her achievements as a writer, others are more inclined to follow. Although there have been female African poets rising over the last few decades, writers such as Warsan Shire, Safia Ellhilo, Abena Busia, and Koleka Putuma, Aidoo still serves as one of the first examples of what is possible for African female poets. Through her, female African poets—and poets in general from the continent—know it is possible to not only achieve success from humble beginnings but to do so across genres. For this representation to be successful, however, the full extent of her work needs adequate visibility. As Ngugi wa Thiongo stated, Aidoo is “a writer in the world and for the world” and she is “a writer for all seasons.” Instead of restricting her to the labels of prose writer and playwright, she deserves to be recognized for the full scope of her oeuvre, both for her and the poets who come after her.

Zainab A. Omaki is a fiction and creative non-fiction writer. She received her MA at the University of East Anglia and currently lives in Lincoln, NE where she is pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing (Fiction).

Works Cited

Aidoo, Ama Ata. After the Ceremonies. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017.

Couto, Maria. “Fault Lines.” The Times Literary Supplement. April 9, 1993. Gale Primary Sources. https://tinyurl.com/3wbnjn7t. Accessed on December 7, 2022.

Kumavie, Delia. “Ama Ata Aidoo’s Woman-Centred PanAfricanism: A Reading of Selected Works.” Feminist Africa. Issue 20, 2015, 57-68.

“Love, Charity, Fantasy.” The Sunday Times. May 22, 1988. Gale Primary Sources. https://tinyurl.com/4ysjs74j. Accessed on December 7, 2022.

Walder, Dennis. “Elite Performances.” The Times Literary Supplement. January 14, 1983. Gale Primary Sources. https://tinyurl.com/mrhvjzpe. Accessed on December 7, 2022.

Yitah, Helen. Foreword. After The Seasons: New and Selected Poetry by Aidoo, Ama Ataa. University of Nebraska Press, 2017, pp. ix-xiv.