Nii Ayikwei Parkes

Full name: Nii Ayikwei Parkes
Pen name: K. P. Kojo (children’s publications)
Nationality / Country of origin: British-Ghanaian — born in the United Kingdom (Lincolnshire), raised in Ghana, based in England
Language(s) of writing: English (primary); active acquaintance with several languages, which he cites as a resource in his creative work

Short Biography

Nii Ayikwei Parkes was born on 1 April 1974 in Lincolnshire, to Ghanaian parents. He grew up in Accra, shaped by a literary inheritance that did not separate the written word from the spoken one: his uncle is Frank Kobena Parkes, one of Ghana’s most important twentieth-century poets, and the family’s relationship to language was never purely textual. Returning to the United Kingdom for university, Parkes studied at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he came to be known for his performance poetry and joined the Black Writer’s Group of Commonword. He later completed a Master of Arts in creative writing at Birkbeck College, University of London.

His trajectory has been consistently that of a writer who refuses specialisation. Poet, novelist, short-story writer, broadcaster, essayist, editor — Parkes has pursued all of these in parallel, understanding them as facets of a single engagement with language and with the literary cultures of Africa and its diaspora. In 2001, he co-founded flipped eye publishing, a small press that became one of the most respected in the UK for poetry and innovative prose. He sits on the boards of World Literature Today and the AKO Caine Prize, and served as chair of judges for the 2020 Commonwealth Prize. He currently serves as Producer of Literature and Talks at the Brighton Festival. His poem ‘Tin Roof’ was selected for the Poems on the Underground initiative in London — one of the youngest writers to receive that distinction.

Published Works

Poetry

• The Makings of You, Peepal Tree Press, 2010
• The Geez, Peepal Tree Press, 2020
• Chapbooks: eyes of a boy, lips of a man; M is for Madrigal; Shorter! [dates to be verified]
• Two spoken-word recordings: Incredible Blues and Nocturne of Phrase [dates to be verified]

Novel

• Tail of the Blue Bird, Jonathan Cape, 2009 (French translation: Notre quelque part, Zulma, 2013)

Children’s books (as K. P. Kojo)

• The Parade
• Tales from Africa
  [dates and publishers to be verified]

Edited anthologies (selected)

• Dance the Guns to Silence, co-edited with Kadija Sesay
• x-24: unclassified, co-edited with Tash Aw, 2007
• South of South, Peepal Tree, 2011
• filigree, Peepal Tree, 2018

Awards

• ACRAG Award (Ghana’s national prize for poetry and literary advocacy), 2007
• Tail of the Blue Bird: shortlisted, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, 2010
• French translation (Notre quelque part, trans. Sika Fakambi): Prix Mahogany 2014; Prix Baudelaire 2014; Prix Laure-Bataillon 2014; named Best First Foreign Novel by Lire magazine, 2014

Presence in the Susu Library

• Tail of the Blue Bird (Notre quelque part), Jonathan Cape / Zulma, 2009/2013