Ghanaian writer Nii Ayikwei Parkes last Friday won the Farrago UK best overall poetry performance award an unprecedented second time in a row. Collecting the award, Nii paid tribute to the audiences at Farrago who he said appreciated real poetry. He also said that this award was extra special since he had cut down his performance schedule last year to concentrate on writing prose for his MA in Creative Writing.

Farrago, founded in 1994 by John Paul O'Neill, is the longest running poetry slam in Europe and has hosted some of the best poets in the world. The organisation also runs multi-lingual nights when poets read in languages such as Spanish, Italian, Russian, French and African languages such as Kikuyu. Nii said this is one of the reasons why he likes the Farrago events so much. "I run the only regular African Writers event in London at the Poetry Caf? and I'm very keen that people recognise and respect African languages and stop labelling them as dialects. Even the so-called Pidgin English we speak is a language on its own. There is no way you can walk out of an English class and understand what people are saying when they are speaking Pidgin. Farrago is one of the events that makes it possible for European audiences to appreciate the versatility and range of our languages."

Nii's next major goal is to encourage writers in Ghana to write in their local languages more as a means of "decolonising minds". He is raising funds to set up a Writers' Fund in Ghana to help achieve that objective.

Background:

Nii Ayikwei Parkes is the author of two collections of poetry, "eyes of a boy, lips of a man" (1999) and M is for Madrigal (2004); and editor of "fourteen two" (2004) and Tell Tales Volume I (2004). His CD "Incredible Blues" is available on iTunes in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Website: www.niiparkes.com

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