Laban Carrick Hill

Now that I have returned from Ghana, I am editing the video recordings I made of Ghana poets reading their work. Beginning in January I will be posting poets reading one or two poems as well as posting a text version of the poem they are reading. I will include biographical information on the poets and their thoughts on poetry in general.

While in Ghana, i was struck by the lack of literary culture. Ghana is not a place where people read for pleasure. As a result, there are almost no publishing houses or bookstores for the general reader. Bookstores either stock religious books or textbooks for schools. If a writer wants to publish a book, he or she must self publish. As well, there is only one creative writing class that is offered in the entire country. It is a one semester class at the University of Ghana in Accra. If a writer wants to pursue creative writing, he or she has almost no place to go. There are very few places for writers to share their work with an audience. In January, the Africa One television station will begin airing a weekly spoken word performance show. The University of Ghana radio station has a weekly Sunday show "Open Air Theater." The Daily Grahic newspaper also publishes a poem each week. There are two online publications: One Ghana, One Voice (http://oneghanaonevoice.com), a literary magazine that has been online for two years, and The Ghanaian Book Review (http://www.kpokplomaja.com), a web portal for Ghanaian writing. Rarely, however, are there public readings or open readings for up and coming poets to share their work, and the few publications that are printed are done by the individual artists themselves.

While I was in Ghana, I worked to develop an undergraduate creative writing curriculum at the University of Cape Coast. I will be continuing to work with the Department of English at the university to implement such a program in the coming years. During my semester at UCC, I discovered that there were many students who wanted to study writing and to write, but were at a loss about how to begin. My sense is that if students can be introduced to writing and to writers a real literary culture will flourish in Ghana. This will take time. Toward that end, I am also working with one of the few small presses in Ghana, Woeli Publishing, to put together an anthology of poets under 40 years of age. I will be co-editing the volume with the poet and fiction writer Martin Egblewogbe, who is working on his Phd in physics at the University of Ghana. Martin and I are also exploring the possibility of starting a small literary imprint to publish three or four books a year in Ghana. We will be exploring funding options in the coming year. If you have any suggestions or comments, please email me at labanhill@yahoo.com.

The work that I read and listened to over the months in Ghana was wonderful and very deserving of being shared around the world. I hope that these posting will be the first in a long series of efforts to promote literature in Ghana and to promote the writers of Ghana around the world.