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

Kwesi Brew's Ideology Misinterpreted

Kwesi Brew (1928 – 2007) was among the first batch of graduates from the university college of Gold Coast (now the university of Ghana) in 1951. Right from his school days, Kwesi developed a keen interest in poetry writing. It was, therefore, not surprising that his collection of poetry won the British Council poetry competition in Accra and that his poems later appeared in Okyeame, a Ghanaian literary journal, among other notable anthologies. Between 1968 and 1996, Kwesi Brew published four collections of poetry: The Clan of the Leopard and other poems (1996), Return of no return and other poems (1995), African Panorama and other poems (1981), and Shadows of Laughter (1968) (Persoon et al. 1).

Kwesi Brew came of age and lived through one of the most important eras in Ghana’s history and yet, he is “practically unknown to Westerners” (Persoon et al. 42). His contemporaries were Kofi Awoonor, Atokwei Okai, Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Wole Soyinka, among others. Interestingly, The Times Literary Supplement of July 4, 1969 describes Kwesi Brew as “Ghana’s leading Poet” and yet, he gets mentioned only four times: August 1963, September 1965, July 1969, and August 1969. If ‘Ghana’s leading poet’ gets mentioned only four times in seven years, then one wonders what publicity unsung or non-leading poets will attract. Persoon et al. lament that, except for a few anthologies, at the time of Kwesi Brew’s death in 2007, none of his four collections of poems was in print (3). This was the case because Brew was not given the recognition due to him.

Comparing him to Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark, Gabriel Okara, and Christopher Okigbo, Gerald Holyoake Moore and Gerald More in "Paths to Refinement” assert that four poems by Kwesi Brew “rise above the level of chronic Mediocrity” (page number). Interestingly, Moore et al. indicate that in 1963, “Kwesi Brew found his path.... by breaking away from Western models.” However, in the succeeding paragraphs, Moore et al. describe the poetry of Kwesi Brew as lacking the “passionate concentration which stamps many of Mr. Echeruo's images.” Before analyzing the substance of that statement, who in the first place is Michael J. C. Echeruo and on what grounds is he compared with Kwesi Brew?

Michael Joseph Chukwudaalu Echeruo attended the university college of Ibadan and later earned his master’s and Ph.D at Cornell University, in Ithaca, USA. Echeruo was a contemporary of Christopher Okigbo and specialized in Elizabethan and Jacobian drama. The Bible, D.H. Lawrence, Joyce, and many Western models were among the sources of his inspiration. Present in all of Echeruo’s poems is a trait of constant lyricism. Azuonye Chukwuma describes Echeruo as one of the “most powerful voices among the first generation of post-independent African poets of English expression” (1).

These two poets, Kwesi Brew and Michael Echeruo, were each unique in their ways. Echeruo found his voice by breaking away from African models whereas Brew’s uniqueness stemmed from breaking “away from the Homiletic tone,” which was “much influenced by hymns and tracts which predominated Ghanaian poetry before 1960” (Holyoake et al. replace this with a page number). Moore et al. add that the poetry of Kwesi Brew was distinct because he ignored “Western models” and “largely” adhered to the “structure and imagery of Akan traditional songs of praise and prayer” (page number).

The explanation above reveals a sharp contrast between the writing style of Echeruo and Brew, while Echeruo wrote mostly on the bedrock of Western models, Brew relied on the models of Akan praise songs and prayer. If Moore et al. argue that the antecedents of Brew’s poetry deny it depth, creativity, and scholarship, then, that is quite unfortunate. Such deficient commentaries and reviews from Western critics inform the thesis of Onwuchewka et al. Towards the Decolonisation of African Literature who described the poetry of Echeruo and his contemporaries, Okigbo and Soyinka, as being “craggy, lumpy, full of obstructions, unnecessary and artificially difficult” where “simple ideas are deliberately clothed in esoteric idioms” (29). The essence of this essay is not in any way to berate the works of Echeruo, who is a great and accomplished poet in his own right; the point, however, is that Moore et al.’s attempt to disregard Brew’s African and Akan worldview and knowledge systems is unnecessary, redundant and must be ignored by all well-meaning scholars.

Besides, what do Moore et al. mean by “passionate concentration”? By this, they refer to Echuruo’s use of sophisticated language and imagery. It needs to be pointed out that Brew, just like Echeruo, initially wrote his poetry following the ideals of Western models. To illustrate further, from Brew’s first collection of poetry, titled “Hot day”, critics should be able to find several examples of “passionate concentration”:

The sheep lie spread in mid-day slumbers

 And drizzling heat encumbers

 The motion of the clouds:

 No cloud moves, no wind shouts

 In the mumbling noon.

 Molten heat shivers in the space,

The white egrets make pace,

 The purple starlings sing:

Their shoulders roll, their cries ring

 In the mumbling noon.

The rhythm, rhyme scheme, and imagery of “Hot day” are molded on the ideals of Wordsworth (Persoon et al. 45). Perhaps the tight imagery and elevated language, the AABC rhyme and others are what Moore et al. describe as being ‘passionate concentration.’ However, being misunderstood might not be the aim of Kwesi Brew; therefore, from such models, which were Western in outlook, style, and content, Kwesi Brew shifted to writing poetry in the language and imagery best understood by his people who were second-language learners of the English language, among whom Western education was just taking root. This shift from using Western models to using African imagery and words was deliberate. Kwesi wanted to communicate and write poems to the appreciation of his kin and not to the enjoyment of Westerners (May et al. 1965). And to do that, his language, imagery, and symbolism had to appeal to his primary audience. In fact, from the Western ideals or models, Kwesi shifted to fellow African poets such as Michel Die-Anang, Awoonor, Mortty, Ademola, Angelou, Sutherland, and de- Graft (Persoon 45). It is worth noting that even his publishing also followed a similar move from Western to African publishers. His first and second books were published in England and America, respectively, but his third and four books were published in Ghana, in 1995and 1996. This shift reinforces a deliberate ideology, thought and outlook in the activities of Kwesi Brew, marking him off as a truly pan-African scholar worth celebrating.

BIO:

Akua Agyeiwaa Denkyi-Manieson is a doctoral student in Literary and cultural studies at the Department of English, University of Nebraska, Lincoln. She hails from Ghana and specializes in the Gold Coast Novel.

Work Cited

Chukwuma, Azuonye. The African Roots of Michael Echeruo’s Poetry: A Close Reading of “Sophia”. African Studies Faculty Publication Series. University of Massachusetts, Boston, 2010.

"Columbia Yale McGill-Queen's University Presses." The Times Literary Supplement, no. 3520, 14 Aug. 1969, p. 901. The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive, link-gale-com.libproxy.unl.edu/apps/doc/EX1200360631/GDCS?u=linc74325&sid=bookmark-GDCS&xid=ebf46322. Accessed 8 Oct. 2022.

Echeruo J.C. Michael. "UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN". Accessed from www.ui.edu.ng. Date 19 October 2022.

May, Derwent J., and D. MAY. "Lingua Franca, Lingua Poetica." The Times Literary Supplement, no. 3316, 16 Sept. 1965, p. 787. The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive, link-gale-com.libproxy.unl.edu/apps/doc/EX1200337631/GDCS?u=linc74325&sid=bookmark-GDCS&xid=1334aa5e. Accessed 8 Oct. 2022.

Moore, Gerald Holyoake, and GERALD MOORE. "Poetry from Africa." The Times Literary Supplement, no. 3205, 2 Aug. 1963, p. 594. The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive, link-gale-com.libproxy.unl.edu/apps/doc/EX1200329552/GDCS?u=linc74325&sid=bookmark-GDCS&xid=4b2d2f38. Accessed 8 Oct. 2022.

Moore, Gerald Holyoake, and Gerald Moore. "Paths to Refinement." The Times Literary Supplement, no. 3517, 24 July 1969, p. 836. The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive, link-gale-com.libproxy.unl.edu/apps/doc/EX1200360477/GDCS?u=linc74325&sid=bookmark-GDCS&xid=75c043e1. Accessed 8 Oct. 2022.

Onwuchewka, Chinweizu, et al. “Towards the Decolonization of African Literature.” Transition, vol. 48, no. 48, 1975, pp. 29–37, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2935056.

Persoon, James, and Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang. “The Early Poetry of Kwesi Brew: An Evaluation.” KENTE - Cape Coast Journal of Literature and the Arts, vol. 3, no. 1, 2022, pp. 40–58, doi:10.47963/jla.v3i1.835.