The Year of Return
In 1962, 5th year of Ghana’s birth,
2 MP’s fail to assassinate President Kwame Nkrumah who
shouts “Long live African independence!”, Kojo Besia stay in hiding,
whilst Grandmother stands still, lengthy, sturdy. Beehive combed
and poofy holding my mother in a diaper with her bulging eyes.
The photographer will lift a lever and no one will smile to capture
the grace of the matriarch. This is how loving is made.
In the Year of Return, “Proper Ghanaian Family Values” brew
as thousands flood back through the gates in Accra
and I clutch the same grainy photo of my mothers,
sorrel creases dancing along the skin and dress of Grandmother.
Heavy nappy, Mother’s eyes are still as alert, fixed on me.
Her little hands begin to shift, clamber out of the sea of yellowing grey,
Until she is wailing in my arms.
I, once clambered out of the warm blueness of her womb
when she grew to grow me. I sing, to my baby mother now, the song
that she would sing to me. Baby little girl don’t cry. Baby little girl
don’t cry. I love you, you love me. Baby little girl don’t cry.
Mother your mother. This how the matriarch is born.
What would she think if she knew? That I no longer assign
with the girl in these lyrics. That my body is more water than skin.
The song calms her and with paper filled mouth, she whimpers
“What if my mother can’t always hold me?”
“She will” I say.
And all at once every card board box full of her every iteration
throughout the years pull off the shelves, albums ramming open.
The whole store room, a tornado of strained marriages,
teenage grins demanding not to be forgotten.
A thousand miles away, President Nana Akufuo Addo announces a bill,
for the social death of me, of my people,
whilst Grandmother lays crumpled in a hospital bed. Mother mirrors her,
on the couch in London, phone line pressed to her ears to keep track
of catheter beeps and groans. This is what the matriarch feels like.
My infant Mother’s bulged eyes comes in to meet her present
and climbs into my arms. “What if mother can’t always hold me?”
both the grey and brown skinned mother begin wailing and I hold them both.
In the winter 2016, corruption is over,
Nana Akufo-Addo is president elect and swears by Freedom and Justice,
I fold myself through a crack in the door, my grey infant mother in hand.
The Mother that raised me sits on the edge of her husband’s bed –
with her mother’s borrowed perseverance – waiting for me block her body
from smothering. I hold her and her past in my arms once more,
baby little girl don’t cry, baby little girl don’t cry.
Father will grunt and take he needs when I finally leave.
Years later, there will be marches in the streets of London, the blood
in the flag outside the Ghana High Commission will stain the windows
and I will hold a mic to my mouth to try and halt time,
death, to halt history for my people
when I come home, Grandmother will see me on facetime,
and stay focused on my shaved head, Mother will egg her on
and I will mourn the matriarch that I could not quite fold my body into.
In our 64th year of independence,
21 people will be detained for unlawful homosexual carnal acts in my Ghana,
and my mother will shout in my face when she learns of my boyhood.
This is how the matriarch is preserved.
An ocean away, I am in hiding
Grandmother will keep my grinning cheeky face in a box,
my small-limbed body, alive and expect me to stay this way.
She will do this for her daughter too.
Kobi Essah Ayensuo (they/he) is a poet, musician, playwright, actor and creative of many hats based in London. Their work often explores their black queer, trans identity and coming of age, navigating relationships, their Ghanaian heritage, spirituality and decolonising the lens which black history is told.
Musically, their own sound can be described as soulful, alternative and harmonic. Music and poetics underpin Kobi’s practice, from their live music performances to poetry and theatre performances that are interweaved with immersive soundscapes.
Kobi Essah Ayensuo has been published with Flipped Eye, South London Gallery, Ink Sweat & Tears Press, and Marques Almeida for London Fashion Week 2020. They have performed their work at several venues and festivals across the UK such as Brainchild festival, Wilderness Festival, Mighty Hoopla Festival, Tate Britain, the Roundhouse, the Barbican and the Southbank Centre.
Kobi Essah Ayensuo is also a BBC Words First finalist and an alumnus of the Obsidian Foundation, Barbican Young Poets, The Writing Room and the Roundhouse Resident Artist programme. And their debut play Sankofa: Before The Whitewash sold out at the Roundhouse’s Last Word festival in 2022. At present Kobi is working on their Debut EP and is part of the Soho Writers Lab cohort 2023/2024.
IS&T internships run for 4 months each consecutively, and in order to go some way towards redressing the balance in publishing, will for the foreseeable future come from the Black, Asian, Latinx and others from the global majority (ethnic minority in the UK); we will almost certainly expand our searches to include other disadvantaged groups as our programme develops. More details are below.