Ghanaian Poetry: A Guide to the Tradition
Quick answer: Ghanaian poetry from Ewe dirges and Akan drum poetry to Kofi Awoonor, Atukwei Okai, and Accra's thriving spoken word scene: a guide to the tradition.
In Ghana, drums can speak poetry. The Akan talking drums render praise names and proverbs in tonal patterns that trained listeners hear as language, so a state occasion may open with a poem no one utters aloud. That intimacy between verse, music, and public ceremony marks the whole Ghanaian tradition, from Ewe funeral dirges to the packed spoken word nights of contemporary Accra.
Ghana's written poetry in English is young, essentially post-independence, but it grew directly out of those older oral arts, and its best-known poet built his entire style on his grandmother's dirges. Few national traditions show the oral-to-page handover so clearly, or keep the two sides in such constant conversation.
The tradition: dirge, drum, and libation
The oral genres are many and precise. Akan communities maintain funeral dirges, sung mainly by women, that the scholar J. H. Kwabena Nketia documented as a full poetic system; drum poetry carries praise names and history; and among the Ewe of the Volta region, the composer-poet was a recognised vocation, with figures like Vinoko Akpalu shaping a repertoire of song-poems about sorrow, community, and fate. Halo, the Ewe tradition of competitive insult poetry between villages, honed wit and metaphor into a contact sport.
Libation prayer, proverb, and praise appellation complete the toolkit, and all of it assumes performance: a poem exists in voice, drum, and occasion before it exists on paper.
The landmarks: independence and after
The Gold Coast produced early literary figures, including Gladys Casely-Hayford, who wrote in the early twentieth century, but the flowering came with independence in 1957, when Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana became a hub of Pan-African culture. Kofi Awoonor translated the Ewe dirge tradition into English poems of haunting cadence, in collections like Rediscovery and the long work This Earth, My Brother; his murder in the 2013 Westgate attack in Nairobi ended a life that had braided poetry and statesmanship. Kwesi Brew's urbane lyrics and Efua Sutherland's foundational work for drama and children's writing built the era's institutions.
Atukwei Okai made performance central again, composing orchestral praise-poems meant for the voice, and Kofi Anyidoho carried the Ewe song-poet's vocation into a scholarly and poetic career, while Ama Ata Aidoo and Abena Busia wrote a feminist line through the canon. In the diaspora, Kwame Dawes, born in Ghana and raised in Jamaica, became one of the anglophone world's most prolific poet-editors.
The craft: the dirge line and the insult match
Awoonor's method repays study: he did not decorate English poems with African references, he imported the dirge's structural habits, its repetitions, its direct address to the dead, its communal we, and let them reorganise English rhythm. Any poet standing between a heritage language and a colonial one can follow that route: translate structures, not just words.
Halo teaches something else, that competitive performance sharpens craft. The insult match rewards precise observation, fresh metaphor, and timing, the same muscles a slam or a contest builds. And drum poetry's lesson is about compression to essence: a whole reputation carried in a two-phrase praise name.
The tradition today
Accra now hosts one of Africa's liveliest spoken word scenes, with collectives like Ehalakasa staging regular open mics and poets such as Mutombo da Poet and Poetra Asantewaa building national followings. The Pa Gya! literary festival gathers writers annually, Nii Ayikwei Parkes bridges Accra and London, and young Ghanaian poets appear steadily in international prize lists and journals. The drums have not gone quiet either; they share the stage, which is exactly how this tradition has always worked.
What poets can take from this
- Read Awoonor beside Nketia's studies of the dirge to see source and poem together.
- Structure an elegy around a repeated returning line, as Ewe dirges do.
- Practise appellation: give people and places praise names in your notebook.
- Attend or watch a spoken word set and note how performers earn their pauses.
- Translate one proverb from your heritage into the seed of a poem.
Try it yourself
Write a poem of libation for the start of something new in your life, pouring one remembered voice, one hope, and one debt into the ground before you begin.
Questions
Who is Ghana's most famous poet?
Kofi Awoonor, whose English-language poetry carried the Ewe dirge tradition to world audiences. Atukwei Okai, Kwesi Brew, and Kofi Anyidoho are also central names in the national canon.
What is halo poetry?
Halo is an Ewe tradition of competitive insult poetry, in which rival groups compose and perform elaborate versified mockery. It trained poets in metaphor, timing, and audience command, and its spirit survives in modern performance poetry.
Is there a spoken word scene in Ghana?
Yes, one of Africa's strongest. Accra collectives such as Ehalakasa run regular events, and performers like Mutombo da Poet and Poetra Asantewaa have large followings alongside festival platforms like Pa Gya!
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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