Life

Born to a Fante family, Brew was brought up by a British guardian after his parents died. He was one of the first graduates from the University College of the Gold Coast in 1951. He was published in Okyeame

Okyeame

This magazine was founded in 1961 by The Writers Workshop, with literary organ Okyeame as key in this development. Thought of after the post-independence era in Ghana, which saw the rapid rise of a new generation of thinkers, writers and poets...

, and four of his poems were included in the 1958 anthology Voices of Ghana

Voices of Ghana

Voices of Ghana:: Literary Contributions to the Ghana Broadcasting System 1955-57 was "the first Ghanaian literary anthology of poems, stories, plays and essays". Published by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Voices of Ghana contained works which had been broadcast on Radio Ghana...

. His first published collection, The Shadows of Happiness (1968), was divided into five thematic sections: 'Passing Souls' (on death); 'Today, We Look at Each Other'; 'The Moment of Our Life' (nature); 'A Plea for Mercy' (the supernatural); and 'Questions of Our Time'. His poetry has been characterized as 'the poetry of statement and situation'.

Works

• The Shadows of Laughter, London: Longman's, 1968
• African Panorama and Other Poems, 1981
• Return of No Return and other poems, 1995
• The Clan of the Leopard and other poems, 1996

External links

• Lalage Bown, Obituary: Kwesi Brew, The Guardian
  The Guardian
  The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
  
  , 10 October 2007
• How Poems Work #1 - L. S. Mensah on Kwesi Brew's "The Sea Eats Our Lands"