Centre for the Study of International Slavery Annual Lecture 2017

Re-Memory: An African Poet & The Burden of History

A Lecture-Performance by Kofi Anyidoho, University of Ghana-Legon

This lecture-performance is anchored in the realization that we need to turn to the language and techniques of poetry for some of the most profound, most memorable articulations of the complex and often deeply embedded dimension of slavery, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

The lecture is a poetic journey into SoulTime, focusing in part on three of the most powerful instruments and symbols of enslavement: The Slave Fort/Castle, The Middle Passage and The Slave Boat.

To properly come to terms with the Burden of History loaded into these Monuments of Enslavement, we are offered a guided tour across Time and Space through the refracturing prizm of selected poems by three African-heritage poets: Haki Madhubuti (in Culture as Motion), Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang (in Cape Coast Castle), and NourbeSe Philip (in Zong).

This journey into SoulTime closes with a reading-performance of “Gathering the Harvest Dance”, Anyidoho's own poem located at the still-centre of the symbolic historical storm encoded into the Elmina Slave Castle in Ghana.

Free to attend and open to all. Registration essential. Refreshments will be served on arrival.

You may also be interested in Common Histories: A Workshop on Slavery and the Creative Arts