Frank Kobina Parkes

Frank Kobina Parkes
Born	Francis Ernest Kobina Parkes 1932 Korle Bu, Ghana
Died	23 May 2004 Accra, Ghana
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	Ghanaian
Period	1960–2004
Genre	Poetry
Literary movement	Negritude
Notable works	"African Heaven"

Frank Kobina Parkes (1932–23 May 2004) was a Ghanaian journalist, broadcaster and poet. He was the author of one book, Songs from the Wilderness (University of London Press, 1965), but is widely anthologised and is perhaps best known for his poem "African Heaven", which echoes the title of Carl Van Vechten's controversial 1926 novel Nigger Heaven, and was selected by Langston Hughes for inclusion in the groundbreaking anthology of African writing An African Treasury (1960). Parkes' poetic style, an intelligent, rhythmic free verse brimming with confidence and undercut with humour, is believed to owe much to the Senegalese poet David Diop, one of the pioneers of the négritude movement. Reviewing Songs from the Wilderness, Mbella Sonne Dipoko said: "Mr Parkes is one of the fine poets writing today about Africa and the world." The book was hailed as "...a landmark not only in Ghanaian poetry but in African poetry as a whole".

Francis Ernest Kobina Parkes was born in 1932 at Korle-Bu, Gold Coast (now Ghana), to a wealthy pharmacist, a settler from Sierra Leone, and an indigene from the Central Region of Ghana. He was educated in Accra and Cape Coast (where he attended Adisadel College) in Ghana, and Freetown, Sierra Leone, and worked briefly as a newspaper reporter and editor before joining the staff of Radio Ghana in 1955 as a broadcaster. A precociously intelligent young man, he continued to pursue his interest in literature and storytelling, occasionally contributing to the BBC's African Writers' Club radio show and even dabbling as an actor in London, appearing in a stage version of Waiting for Wanda in the early 1960s before it was produced for TV by the BBC.

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