Kweku Abimbola is a poet, educator, and performer.
Winner of the 2022 Academy of American Poets First Book Prize
Kweku’s debut collection, Saltwater Demands a Psalm, was selected by Tyehimba Jess to win the Academy of American Poets First Book Prize.
Saltwater Demands a Psalm creates a cosmology in search of Black eternity governed by Adinkra symbols--pictographs central to Ghanaian language and culture in their proverbial meanings--and rooted in units of time created from the rhythms of Black life.These poems groove, remix, and recenter African language and spiritual practice to rejoice in liberation's struggles and triumphs. Abimbola's poetry invokes the ecstasy and sorrow of saying the names of the departed, of seeing and being seen, of being called and calling back.
"Built of rituals old and new, Kweku Abimbola's debut ties together life and afterlife, hope and mercy, the knowledge of blood and the long memory of water. . . . Abimbola is a wonderful storyteller who has picked the poem as his lute to play for his beloved people."
--Danez Smith