Nii Parkes

Nii Ayikwei Parkes (/ˌniːˈi ˈaɪˈɪkweɪ ˈpɑːrks/;^[2] born 1 April 1974),^[3] born in the United Kingdom to parents from Ghana, where he was raised, is a performance poet, writer and sociocultural commentator. He is one of 39 writers aged under 40 from sub-Saharan Africa who in April 2014 were named as part of the Hay Festival's prestigious Africa39 project.^[4]

Biography

Born in the UK while his parents were studying there, Nii Parkes was raised from the age of three or four in Ghana,^[5] where he was educated at Achimota School. His first editorial role was in 1988 working on his school magazine, The Achimotan, and he went on to co-found, at the age of 17, filla! magazine, Ghana’s first student-run national magazine.^[6] Parkes subsequently studied in England at Manchester Metropolitan University. While there, he emerged as a performance poet and was also a member of the Black Writer's Group of Commonword.^[3] He was children's poet-in-residence at the Brighton Festival in 2007.^[7]

A veteran of several poetry festivals, and former poet-in-residence at the Poetry Café in London, he has performed poetry in the United Kingdom, Europe, Ghana and the United States and was a 2005 Associate Artist-In-Residence with BBC Radio 3. In 2007 he was British Council writer-in-residence at California State University, Los Angeles^[8] and became one of the youngest living writers (along with Owen Sheers and Choman Hardi) featured in the Poems on the Underground programme in London with his poem "Tin Roof".^[9]

Parkes runs regular workshops in the UK and has set up a Writer’s Fund in Ghana to promote writing among the country's youth. He has recorded two CDs of his spoken-word poetry, Incredible Blues and Nocturne of Phrase, and has published three chapbooks of poetry – eyes of a boy, lips of a man, M is for Madrigal, and the self-published Shorter!,^[10] which was put together to raise money for the Writers' Fund initiative.

He is also the co-founder and Senior Editor at flipped eye publishing, for whom he has edited fourteen two (editor), Dance the Guns to Silence (co-editor with Kadija Sesay) and x-24: unclassified (co-editor with Tash Aw).

Parkes' short stories can be found in Tell Tales: Volume I (Tell Tales) and Mechanics Institute Review (Birkbeck) and an excerpt from his second fiction manuscript, Afterbirth,^[11] is featured in the New Writing 15 anthology published by Granta in June 2007.

His debut novel, Tail of the Blue Bird, was published by Jonathan Cape in June 2009, and was shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Translated into French by Sika Fakambi, it was published as Notre Quelque Part by Éditions Zulma, winning the 2014 Prix Baudelaire, Prix Mahogany and Prix Laure Bataillon and being selected by leading literary magazine Lire as the Best First Foreign Book of the year and one of the Top 20 books published in France in 2014.^[12]

An experienced performer of his work, he has appeared at readings all over the world, including the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, New York; the Royal Festival Hall, London; and Java, Paris, and often leads writing and performance workshops. He was the resident poet at Borders Bookstores, where he hosted the monthly open mike at Charing Cross Road between 2001 and 2005.

He became the Booktrust's online writer-in-residence in 2009.^[13][14] In 2010 he became a writer-in-residence for the charity First Story.^[15] He also runs the African Writers' Evening^[16] series at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden.

In 2012 Parkes represented Ghana at Poetry Parnassus at the Southbank Centre in London, the largest international poetry festival in the UK held in conjunction with the London Olympics.^[17][18] In autumn 2014 the University of Tübingen welcomed him and his fellow writers Taiye Selasi, Priya Basil and Chika Unigwe and to that year's Writers' Lectureship, all of them writers representing what Selasi calls Afropolitan Literature.

In 2014–15, Parkes was the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Aberystwyth, Wales.^[19] He was selected as one of Africa's 39 most promising authors under the age of 40 for the World Book Capital Africa39 project in 2014.

Parkes runs the Creative Writing course at the African University College of Communications in Accra, Ghana.^[12] sits on the Board of Trustees of pan-African literary initiative Writivism, with fellow writers Zukiswa Wanner, Chika Unigwe, NoViolet Bulawayo, E. C. Osondu and Lizzy Attree.^[20]

Personal life

Parkes is a descendant of J. C. E. Parkes, the Sierra Leone Creole civil servant.

Selected bibliography

Writing by Parkes has appeared in many journals and magazines, including Index on Censorship, International PEN Magazine, The Liberal, The Mechanics' Institute Review, Poetry News, Poetry Review, Sable, Statement (CSULA), Storyteller Magazine, X Magazine, and Wasafiri.

Fiction

• Tail of the Blue Bird (novel), Jonathan Cape, 2009; Vintage, 2010, ISBN 978-0099526124.
  • Translated into French (by Sika Fakambi) as Notre Quelque Part,^[5] Zulma, 2014, ISBN 978-2843047701.

Poetry

• eyes of a boy, lips of a man, Flipped Eye Publishing, 1999; 2nd edition 2005, ISBN 978-9988002466.
• M is for Madrigal: Seven Poems, tall lighthouse, 2004, ISBN 978-1904551096.
• The Makings of You, Peepal Tree Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1845231590.

As editor

• Fourteen Two: Twenty Eight Love Poems, Flipped Eye Publishing, 2004, ISBN 978-0954224790
• With Kadija Sesay, Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems for Ken Saro-Wiwa, Flipped Eye Publishing, 2005, ISBN 978-1905233014
• With Tash Aw, X-24: Unclassified, Flipped Eye Publishing, 2007, ISBN 978-0954157012

Awards and recognition

• 2007: Ghana's National ACRAG award for poetry and literary advocacy^[6]
• 2009: Finalist for the UK YCE Publishing Award^[6]
• 2010: Shortlisted for Commonwealth Writers' Prize (for Tail of the Blue Bird)
• 2014: Prix Baudelaire, Prix Mahogany, and Prix Laure Bataillon (for Notre Quelque Part)

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Nii Parkes

• Nii Parkes website
• Writers' Fund Website
• "D. Herrle Tea Interviews - Nii Parkes".
• Profile on Contemporary Writers website
• Part 1 of BBC Radio documentary on Nii's novel (audio)
• Part 2 of BBC Radio documentary on Nii's novel (audio)
• Tail of the Blue Bird on Amazon