Title: Afriku
Description: AFRIKU Reviewed by Richard Gilbert


Haiku in English: how might we understand the power of this poetic genre? As a nature poetics, a brief epithet, a modestly imagistic dash of color? Certainly, over the last several decades there have been numerous attempts to both define and restrict this form in such ways, with often mediocre creative consequences. So it is with delight that a new voice in haiku emerges: Adjei Agyei-Baah, hailing from Ghana and a leader in the growing haiku movement of Afriku, enriches our world in demonstrating an accomplished sense of this brief poetic form. With breathtaking range of concept and topic, Adjei presents a breadth of new possibilities for haiku in this new century, doing so with a clarity and apparent ease which belies the depth of meaning and feeling — and social consciousness — he powerfully evokes. 

These works reveal a poet’s passion for his world and culture, without compromise. For example, in:

Drought —
the farmer digs
into his breath

A complex and powerfully kinesthetic scene arises — of a man, yet also a family; a family yet a country as well; a country yet too a climate. A lineage of work and living, yet also a question of its end: struggle and fear for the future — concerns the reader achingly feels.

Often, animal, human and natural forms relate intimately in a fluid and organic sociality which belies the term “personification,” or anthropomorphic fallacy:

leafless tree
lifting a cup of nest
to the sky

We feel again the horror of drought, personified through both the image and literal reality of the dying denuded tree, beseeching the empty heavens as if in supplication or prayer, and behind this, the poet too, finding a way to speak both for humanity and the environment.

Adjei’s impressive range of style is shown in haiku such as the following pair, which reveal both a sensitive heart and impressive turns of phrase:


plastic flowers —
your long gone fragrance
I nurse in pretense

night river
bringing him closer
boy on the moon

A sense of surrealism or magical realism here blends with remembrance, and nonchalance with loss and rediscovery, possessing a lightness of tone that belies the gravitas of each subject. 

Haiku, we now know, has an appeal that is now burgeoning throughout the world, and being widely shared through the medium of English. If the reader wonders at this mysterious power of the haiku form, Adjei’s work certainly provides an answer, as he weaves together what is most personal and local, in his life, home and culture, with a humanity of spirit that is truly universal.


Richard Gilbert
Kumamoto University, Japan
May 13, 2016
Subjects: Afriku, Haiku, Senryu, Africa Haiku, Ghana, Africa Haiku Network, Poetry (poetic works by one author)
Places: Ghana, Africa
People: Ghanaian, Lost Tribe
Time periods: Ghana