We are excited to share highlights from the Ancestors, Answer Me exhibition which featured a conversation on Narratives in Transition: Linguistics, Poetry, and the Reimagination of Ghanaian Expression with Nana Asaase on Books with Abena Podcast.
The program welcomed Nana Asaase, Ghanaian poet, cultural practitioner, and storyteller, whose work draws deeply from Akan oratory and folklore, interweaving English and Twi to expand the possibilities of poetic expression. For over two decades, Nana Asaase has brought his art to audiences around the world—from presidents and global dignitaries to literary communities—with appearances on platforms such as BBC and CNN’s African Voices.
Through this dialogue, we explored how poetry and orality continue to evolve within contemporary Ghanaian culture, and how language remains a vital vessel for memory, identity, and imagination. The conversation underscored the role of poets and cultural practitioners in safeguarding linguistic heritage while reimagining it for new generations and forms.
This gathering forms part of our ongoing commitment to fostering spaces where African poetic traditions meet new interpretations—bridging the oral and the written, the ancestral and the contemporary.
“Ancestors, Answer Me, a group exhibition of poems that examine the enduring dialogue between the living and the departed. Drawing on traditions of oral invocation, libation, and symbolic ritual, the selected works highlight the significance of memory as both material and medium.
Here, poetry is expressed through the tangibility of words: the pouring of libation into verse, the invocation of Asaase Yaa through prayer, the return to names whispered into the dust. All these poems trace the scars of history and the weight of inheritance, yet they also reimagine survival as a creative act—a way of carrying forward what could not be silenced.
By positioning poetry within the framework of exhibition, Ancestors, Answer Me expands the threshold of curatorial practice. The library walls hold questions as much as responses, staging the poem as both shrine and conversation. Together, the works form a living archive that insists on the vitality of ancestral memory while opening pathways for contemporary expression and collective healing.” – Curatorial statement by James Lemaire.
Presented by:
Museum of African Poetry
Supported by:
Books With Abena, e-Ananse Library, New Voices Poetry, and the Creatives Ghana Project.
