Nana S. ACHAMPONG

Nana S. ACHAMPONG Poems

Nana S. ACHAMPONG Biography

Nana S. Achampong was born in Cape Coast, the third of seven siblings. His step father, a publishing distributor, stacked thousands of literary classics in their residence which opened his imagination to Huysman, Chaucer, Dostoyevsky, Mann, Nietzsche, Homer, Soyinka, Aryi kwei Armah, Rand etc. At seventeen, he had finished his first book ‘Seekers Find’ (unpublished) part of which appears in ‘Dream A Song’. Achamong abandoned an MBA program with the Open University in the UK to return to Ghana to start ‘The Wind’ magazine. After journalism school, he interned at the ‘Weekly Spectator’, where under the wings of the award-winning editor Yaw Boakye Ofori-Atta he started focusing on the arts and entertainment. He was coached to run the Arts Page which qualified him to become a member of the Entertainment Critics and Reviewers Association of Ghana. Under the tutelage of Carl Bannerman and film maker Ernest Abbeyquaye, he became the youngest Secretary of the king-making body in 1988 still barely twenties. The late 1980s was hectic for the restless Achampong. Between the two years before the decade was over, he teamed up with media entrepreneur RexImage’s Rex Danquah to create the ‘Weekend Leisure’ newspaper. With media guru Kojo Yankah, he started the ‘Uhuru’ monthly magazine. The cultural maverick, the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti, after his second of several encounters with Achampong in the late 1980s, told Carl Bannerman on his ‘Solid Black’ radio programme in Ghana of the Achampong’s writing style: “he does acrobatics with the English language. That is how Africans mus’ be. Whatever it is that has been pushed onto you, you have to excel at it and then reproduce it in your own unique African way. And that is what he is doing.” Achampong’s first book of verse, ‘The Equilibrists’, was published by Leroy Coubagey much later in 1995 to rave critical reviews. His second volume of verse ‘Floating’ was published another ten years later, opening the gates to a flood of prolificacy. ‘Sun of God’, a play in five acts followed. Achampong’s fecund imagination continued around the recurring theme which encompasses his childhood influences of African culture, antiquity, a schizophrenic social conditioning and the quest for love and the divine. His subsequent works, the inspirational nonfictions ‘Empowernomics: understanding the system of God’s purpose for mankind’ and ‘Adinkra (ī 'kŏ n') -cepts: [concept ikons of the Asante Akan of West Africa]’ which traces the history of the symbology and the Akans of West Africa complete with a sumptuous buffet of pictures and illustrations, followed. ‘My Kikuyu Princess’, a collection of poems was released soon after. In the Spring of 2008, ‘The Blight’, the much awaited second novel, hit the stands. He currently lives iin Baltimore.)

The Best Poem Of Nana S. ACHAMPONG

Depressed

I used to anticipate the rain on my brain
Streaking lightly, comforting, the confused winds therein,
Like deliberate dabs, delicately intended for primed canvas.
But not this moment…no, not the rain;
Its constant drumming wrenches out bile oppressed
From the very inside of my anxious, depleted gut
And my passions squeal helplessly into an unheard din.

I’ve always basked in the benevolent light
Spread freely, dependably daily, by the providence of life,
Kindling in us those fiery tongues that wake and energize...
Until this moment…that is, the light:
The engulfing vigor which prods and nudges,
And drives and projects, even as we wallow at the nadir,
Today cloaks my senses and embalms my being.

It’s all dark in here, and damp, and soiled
I feel trapped inside my entombing frame,
By the same sensuous skin that used to pleasure-
Not this time, not the darkness, not my pelt.
My heart is sinking in a tortured fluid of despair;
Not even the strings of Farka Toure can save me.
I am stripped of my feelers in these dank pits.

The idea of love always warmed my ever-eager heart
In bed, on soles, in life, in songs; it spread smiles
By lifting each above himself, buoying the spirit.
But not today, the love and all, not today -
I quake from fear that a stranger will bless me, in truth,
When all I crave in deed is just to lie morose,
Close my life like yesterday’s sports pages, and…yield.

Nana S. ACHAMPONG Comments