Poem for National Poetry Day 2017: Whom Do We Thank for Women’s Conferences? – Ama Ata Aidoo, 1992

Whom Do We Thank for Women’s Conferences?
– Ama Ata Aidoo, Dangaroo Press 1992

Ama Ata Aidoo is a Ghanaian poet, the “first published African woman dramatist”, a title she gained for her Dilemmas of a Ghost play that she wrote as an astonishingly mature 21 year old. This poem comes from her collection ‘An Angry Letter in January’, published 30 years after that play was written.

Poem for National Poetry Day 2014: John Berryman’s ‘Of Suicide’

Recently, I opened up some John Berryman again and been enjoying his poetry, so for National Poetry Day, I thought I’d offer up one of his poems. Berryman (1914 – 1972) was, says Michael Hofmann in the introduction to my Faber edition, “of the first generation of American ‘professional poets’”. i.e. he taught in university, toured around giving ‘readings’ and winning prizes. He was also an alcoholic and suicidal. His father had killed himself when Berryman was 12 and the poet himself ended the same way nearly 50 years later. The dates of his publications make interesting reading: