Our First Poetry Writing Competition

I wrote previously about how last year we hosted an award-winning Akan poet named Kwame Brenya, who taught a Twi poetry writing workshop at our language arts center, Kasadwini Atenaeɛ. We scheduled this the month before my arrival in Asisiriwa on purpose. I wanted to try an experiment based on the success of our previous reading competitions and my research into African-language literatures: a writing competition that meshed with and honored Akan oral traditions.

Oral literature & poetry traditions in the West & Africa

In the West, reading and writing are private affairs, and writing contests reflect this: Submissions are judged by a panel of distant expert judges behind closed doors and the results are announced along with some kind of publication so that readers can consume the works in the comfort of their own private spheres. The whole process is impersonal; it reflects the Western literary tradition that a text is autotelic (complete within itself, not requiring context or interpretation by the author)¹ and that anyone with the skill of literary analysis can judge a work, regardless of their background or where the text comes from². But African literary traditions are different—even with the introduction of writing and print, which has permeated many aspects of society, the influence of oral literature remains strong, and it’s even preferred by many people, both in popular and elite forms of art.

Oral literature cannot be divorced from its performance. Even if the words are recorded and written down, they cannot stand on their own and be called the whole work³. The words require the performance: the facial expressions, tone, gestures, pause and rhythm, visual elements (like costumes or setting), and of course, an audience. In African literary traditions, the audience is a key part of the performance; they are not passive consumers, but active participants—they co-constitute the text with the narrator⁴. The same is true in the Akan context, and specifically the Ashanti context, where Asisiriwa is located.

The structure & plan of the Twi poetry writing competition

Thus, we designed the Twi poetry writing competition to have two sections: a written section and a performance section. All the students who participated in Kwame’s workshop were invited to submit a poem by a certain deadline, and ten of them did so: Bright Dwamena, Vivian Agyei, Zipporah Ofosu, Jerry Ofosuhene, Juliet Opoku, Solomon Duah, Maxwell Nii Annan, Moses Osei Mensah, Benjamin Boateng, and Cindy Commey. We scanned these ten handwritten poems, anonymized and numbered them, and sent them to four judges: three Akan poets and one elder of Asisiriwa (the ɔkyeame, or “linguist”, Jackson Opoku, whose job is to speak the language well on behalf of the chief and his visitors). These judges ranked the ten poems based on skillful use of the Twi language and composition, and these ranks were converted into points (with 1 point being the best and 10 being the worst) and added together.

The Twi poetry writing competition begins!

At the end of the written section, Juliet Opoku was in the lead with 6 points, Cindy Commey was in second with 12 points, and Bright Dwamena was in third with 19 points (though we kept these scores a secret until the end so as not to let it affect the performances). The writing section and performance section were worth the same number of points, so these students would have to do well in both to stay on top.

In the afternoon of the same day as our JHS reading competition, the ten poets performed their poems in our amphitheater in front of a full audience composed of all the JHS students; JHS teachers; two officers from the Ministry of Tourism, Arts, and Culture; and two representatives from Akan News. Many of the poets wore costumes to go along with their performances, and they all tried to embody their narrators with their gestures, emotion, and tone.

Students perform their poems for the writing competition

Zipporah Ofosu, a primary class-6 student who had gotten last place in the written section, came out swinging in the performance section. Dressed simply in her school uniform, she gave a moving delivery of her poem “Sɛ wote wiase a nfa sika nto woho” (If you are living on earth, don’t keep money with you) that landed her 12 points (third place) on the performance section.

Solomon Duah, who had tied for 4^th on the written section, dressed as a roadside preacher (a common sight in Ghana) for his poem titled “Sakra Wadwene” (Change Your Mindset). His humorous delivery—which had people in the audience bending over with laughter—secured him 8 points (second place) on the oral section.

But it was Cindy Commey, a JHS form-3 student, who shocked everyone with her performance of her poem “Eno Baatanpa” (A Good Mother), which was about a girl losing her mother. Dressed in mourning clothes, she summoned tears and sobbed through a heart-wrenching and believable delivery that made adults in the audience start weeping. During the thunderous applause after she stepped off the stage, I turned to our librarian, Kumi, and asked if Cindy had really lost her mom, to which he replied, “No, her mom is fine!” Cindy secured 4 points (first place) on the performance section by a landslide.

Celebration erupts as final scores in poetry writing competition are tallied

Everyone in the audience was given a slip of paper and told to write down the title of their favorite poem to vote for the best performance. While these votes where tabulated by Quist (one of our board members) and other teachers, the audience was entertained by a poet who had not submitted her poem in time for judging. The tabulated points were multiplied by four to equal the weight of the written section (meaning that the audience was as powerful as all the writing judges combined). We then wrote down, on a whiteboard for all to see, the scores for the written section, performance section, aggregates, and then rankings.

As we wrote “1^st” in the box next to Cindy Commey’s name, the audience erupted into cheers, dancing, and singing. Our teacher, Mary, rushed forward to embrace Cindy and Juliet, two of her mentees, one under each arm. The celebration was raucous and jubilant—you could be forgiven for thinking you were at a football match, not a poetry contest.

In the end, Solomon Duah got 3^rd place. Juliet Opoku, who had gotten first in the written section and fourth in the performance section, finished in 2^nd. The top three finishers all got backpacks filled with new school supplies and a book of Ghanaian-language poetry, as well as a cash prize generously donated by Bolingo Consult, which publishes the website Akan News. As the 1^st place winner, Cindy Commey also won a tablet computer.

Results of the Twi poetry writing competition

This experiment seems to have been a resounding success. Students who signed up voluntarily for our workshop received free, personal, intensive training after school in how to compose poetry in their language. They were then given an immediate opportunity to put this into practice in a way that was fun, pushed the boundaries of what they were used to, incentivized them to do their best, and rewarded their efforts. By the end of it, we had 25 students with a better formal understanding of Twi poetry, 10 of whom had performed in front of an audience (to the amazement of their teachers). Community members were reminded that language arts education can have immediate rewards. Everyone’s expectations of what education is like, what poetry can do, and what these students are capable of were expanded. I’m very excited to hold another one of these soon!

References:

1. Hedges, Warren. New Criticism Explained. Southern Oregon University, 1997. ↩︎
2. Barber, Karin. The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics. Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 169. ↩︎
3. Finnegan, Ruth. Oral Literature in Africa. Open Book Publishers, 2012, p. 5. ↩︎
4. Barber, Karin. The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics. Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 137. ↩︎