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Father Dawes
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
In July 2022, Kwame Dawes and I talked about the magnificent work he has done with the African Poetry Book Fund since 2012.
Kwame Dawes is a Ghanaian poet, playwright, actor, editor, critic, teacher, and musician, but he is much more than what he says about himself. Born in Ghana in 1962 to a Ghanaian mother and a Jamaican father who was born in Nigeria, Kwame returned with his family to Jamaica in 1971 and lived there until his early adulthood. Kwame’s father, Neville Augustus Dawes, was a renowned poet and novelist whose work attracted the attention of eminent critics and writers like George Lamming, Gerald Moore and Edward Braithwaite. Neville was also a teacher, and it was during his time as a lecturer at the University of Ghana that he and his wife Sophia, an artist and social worker, had Kwame. Kwame’s background inspired his lifelong vocations and his awareness of the presence of a world larger than the self. It is marvellous how each of his identities embodies the topographies of human journeys. His life invites us to see these journeys, from Africa to the Caribbean to the US and other parts of the world, as an enduring investment in human civilization.
Dawes’ hyphenated heritage shines through in his writing. In his debut novel She’s Gone, which won the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Best First Novel, Dawes blends his Jamaican and American experiences to tell the story of Kofi, a famous Jamaican reggae singer, and Keisha an African American woman, whose relationship suffers from the cultural and mental roadblocks that separate peoples, nations and continents. Dawes’ collections of poetry include Duppy Conqueror (2013), Wheels (2011), Back of Mount Peace (2009), Impossible Flying (2007), and Gomer’s Song (2007). These poems conflate the joy and anguish of all the places he has lived in, all the people and things he has loved and interacted with, all that he is and all that he aspires to become. His earliest plays embody the quiet struggle between the pressures of religion and intellectualism. Although his father, his uncle Kofi Awonoor and their family friend Lamming did not approve of the religious content of his plays, Dawes went on to become an accomplished playwright. By creating art that spoke from and to his Christian faith, Dawes enlarged the tongues and thoughts of his imagination. For him, “To be a Christian author of the born-again ilk can be quite complicated. One is faced with the combination of a personal need to evangelize [...] At the same time, one is faced with the larger question of art, the influences and the ambitions of being a good artist and daring to fantasize about being a great artist.” To his credit, even in those earliest plays, Dawes skillfully negotiated a balance between spirituality and art. His screenplay, Moon Over Aburi, which portrays the monstrosity of crime and the vehemence of justice in contemporary society with cinematic density and emotional depth, was recently directed by Sheila Nortley in a short film.
Dawes’ work in the African Poetry Book Fund is driven by his conviction that there are talented poets in Africa. He believes that young African poets hardly emerge globally because of the lack of sustainable publishing infrastructure to give their work the audience and patronage it requires and deserves. Essentially, his introduction to the fifth edition of the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Box Set, one of the publishing arms of the African Poetry Book Fund, reads like a manifesto reflecting on his journey through poetry and confessing his serendipitous discovery of the beauty of labouring for the ultimate good of art and society.
The African Poetry Book Fund model involves hunting and refining talents. From relying on the informed recommendations of poets around the world to paying attention to the poems submitted for the Sillerman First Book Prize for Poetry, from establishing and sustaining a collaborative relationship with the Brunel International Poetry Prize (now the Bernardine Evaristo Prize for African Poetry) with the aim of discovering poets with considerable potentials who submit their works for the contest to browsing the internet, literary blogs and social media, the African Poetry Book Fund explores diverse avenues in a dedicated search for new and promising poetic voices.
I knew that Dawes was devoted to supporting new poets in Africa and the Diaspora, but the extent of his commitment pleasantly surprised me on two occasions.
The first was in December 2022 when he reached out to me a few days after I delivered a lecture titled “Facebook Writers: The Emergence of a New Generation of Nigerian Poets” at the University of Nigeria. He described the work as “a fascinating piece.” I accepted his generous remark as an acknowledgement of the genius of all the young Nigerian poets whose work I featured in the lecture and who have benefitted greatly from the African Poetry Book Fund.
The second was in January this year, some days after the publication of a profile I wrote on him. He was so thankful for the work and the honour of winning the Brittle Paper’s Person of Year Award, as his text so glowingly expresses: “Hello, Darlington. This may sound strange, but I really only today realized that you had written a feature on me for the award by Brittle Paper. I had a chance to read it, and I want to just say thank you for the piece, for the generosity of it. As I have briefly indicated, the award is really one that I value, and your piece reminds me of how professional and thoughtful Brittle Paper has been as an organization and force in the literary world.” Dawes ended the note with his hope that we would work together in the future. That future is now, and I am delighted to be offering my service to the African Poetry Book Fund as a research fellow.
Dawes’ other initiative, the African Poetry Book Distribution Project, was created with the aim of gaining better insights into “the state of poetry book distribution in the African continent.” These insights are garnered from the opinions of writers, editors, curators, booksellers, publishers, publicists and other stakeholders in the African poetry scene. The project lends credence to Dawes’ vision of an African continent where poets' talents will be recognised and financially rewarded. This is especially important in a world where fiction and nonfiction have better material prospects.
A friend recently told me that he might die a poor writer since he would never write nonfiction, which he thinks is the most commercially successful genre of literature. This friend is a fiction writer and will publish his debut novel next year. Beyond his rich sense of humour lies the agitations of a young artist concerned about his future as a writer. If my friend could say this, even in the midst of sufficient evidence that some fiction writers earn hugely from their work, imagine what he would have said if he were a poet. It is also useful to mention that my friend is a white American who is aware of the privilege of his background. Now, imagine for the second time what the confession of young African poets, especially those who live on the continent, would be. But Dawes’ work ameliorates the anxieties of these poets by giving hope to their dreams. It is almost impossible to forget Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto’s joy the night he told me, “Darlington, Kwame Dawes reached out and requested my poetry. I know he’s awake reading it now.” You see, Dawes does not sleep on duty. What matters to him is the work and all the possibilities it presents.
Dawes founded the African Poetry Book Fund to “promote and advance the development and publication of the poetic arts through its book series, contests, workshops, and seminars and through its collaborations with publishers, festivals, booking agents, colleges, universities, conferences and all other entities that share an interest in the poetic arts of Africa.” Mary-Jane Deeb, chief of the African and Middle East division of the Library of Congress, described this mission as “an enormous task,” in February 2017 when the library profiled the African Poetry Book Fund. How then has Dawes carried on admirably with this “enormous task” in the last eleven years, accomplishing much more than he initially set out to do? Dawes has an explanation to this puzzle: “People ask me Kwame, how are you? And I say I am fine. And they say, why? That’s because I am working with some of the most amazing people, and that’s the team that is responsible for the African Poetry Book Fund.”
The editorial team of the African Poetry Book Fund comprises Matthew Shenoda, professor and chair of the Department of Literary Arts at Brown University and author of four poetry collections; John Keene, author of the award-winning novel Annotations and of the poetry collection Seismosis; Aracelis Girmay, an assistant professor at Hampshire College and author of three poetry collections; Bernadine Evaristo, a professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London, author of eight works of fiction and verse fiction plays, founder of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize and co-winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, author of the poetry collections Taller Than Buildings and The Everyday Wife; Gabeba Baderoon, a professor of English at Stellenbosch University and author of the poetry collections The Dream in the Next Body and A Hundred Silences; and Chris Abani, a Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University, author of five books of fiction and seven poetry collections.
This team of incredibly talented artists and thinkers demonstrates Dawes’ willingness to extend beyond the self and assemble others who possess both the gift of ideas and the compassion to offer them freely. Abani beautifully renders the unity of purpose that guides the team and their shared admiration for Dawes in the following reflection: “Kwame has two nicknames, one is Father Dawes, because he is the father. And the second is Noah, because he knows everything.”
The African Poetry Book Fund “is a house that we are all building, whenever you wake up, you pick up the shovel and you start doing it.” Similarly, Shenoda testifies to Dawes’ clarity of vision: “Having met Kwame some years ago and seen what he does, when he first approached me with this idea, I knew that this would actually happen. I love Kwame’s audacity, the idea of making a space that holds us, a space that will be a foundation for the future of who we are and what we do.”
In my first physical meeting with Dawes in his office at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he welcomed me with a broad smile and asked if I had fully recovered from jet lag. I told him that Nigerians do not need to recover from jetlag. Instead, jet lag needs time to recover from us. He laughed, shaking his head, and then said even he was fascinated by the Nigerian spirit. As I was about to leave the office, he said, "Darlington, let me know if you need anything. Let me know if you have any problems. I can solve these things in ways you might never know.” What more could I ask for that Dawes has not already given to me and my generation?
Eleven months ago, Tryphena Yeboah, Dawes’ personal assistant, told me a moving story of Dawes’ humane disposition towards her. Since then, I have been looking forward to an event to share it with others. Let me do so now, in Yeboah’s exact words: “Once I stood at Kwame Dawes’ doorway and asked him if I looked ridiculous because people were wearing shorts outside and I was worried they would make fun of me, but I was also so cold and couldn’t help it. He looked at me and with a smile, told me I don’t have to think about what people will say, and then he said there was one more thing I was missing: a scarf. So, he pulled out his scarf and showed me how to wrap it around my neck. Just like that. A teacher, even in the most ordinary moments. I can’t forget the day I emailed him with a list of tasks and a note that I may be catching a cold. He responded immediately and it was a recipe for homemade ginger beer.” I think we need a piece of Dawes in our lives, to lighten the burden of our journeys as young Africans.
Let me reintroduce my subject for those who will only read this last paragraph. I am talking about Kwame Dawes who was born in Ghana, whose father, a writer and teacher, was born in Nigeria in 1926, whose mother was an artist, whose maternal uncle was the great poet Kofi Awoonor, who is the founder of the African Poetry Book Fund, a 2009 winner of the Emmy Award and any other thing that Chekwube Danladi, Safia Elhillo, Tsitsi Jaji, Mukoma wa Ngugi, Ladan Osman, Hope Wabuke, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Romeo Oriogun, Uche Okonkwo, Ber Anena, Saddiq Dzukogi, Rasaq Malik Gbolahan, Chisom Okafor, Siwar Masannat and a host of other beneficiaries of Dawes’ kindness might add. I will leave you with the remarks of Rob Casper, head of the poetry and literature center at the Library of Congress, “As much as I want to be a dynamo in this world, I could never match the wonder of Kwame Dawes [who] embodies the kind of ambition that can change the world.”
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye is a literary conversationist, editor and writer. He is the curator of Selfies and Signatures: An Afro Anthology of Short Stories, coeditor of Daybreak: An Anthology of Nigerian Short Fiction and editor of the international anthology of writings, Through the Eye of a Needle: Art in the Time of Coronavirus, and The Good Teacher: A Collection of Essays in Honour of Isidore Diala and Samuel Anthony Itodo. Anuonye was awarded the 2021 Amplify Fellowship by CovidHq Foundation, longlisted for the 2018 Babishai Niwe African Poetry Award and shortlisted in 2016 by the Ibadan Poetry Foundation for its inaugural residency. His work has appeared in World Literature Today, The Hopkins Review, Brittle Paper, The New Black Magazine, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. "Unbound", his coedited anthology of contemporary Nigerian poetry, is forthcoming in 2024, in North America and Nigeria, by Griots Lounge Publishing and Narrative Landscape, respectively.