Graywolf Lab

interdisciplinary conversations and new writing from Graywolf Press

Kweku Abimbola

“A lot of my work tries to decolonize time and tries to root it back in more indigenous West African cosmologies.”

Kweku Abimbola was one of our guests to our first Lab roundtable. For the conversation, he shared “Libation,” a poem from his debut collection, Saltwater Demands a Psalm, which was published by Graywolf in April 2023.
Libation Swallow spirits with me many drink many drank many drunk from this calabash of palm wine I pour While pouring I chant Kwame Kwame come drink The giver of Saturday receive drink As I pour soilward some of the drink spittles along the hem of my lucid cloth Yaa Yaa come drink Thursday’s keeper and Earth’s here is drink for you too today today is your lustral day drink-drink I keep pouring When I call one of you I have called all you departed spirits of the seven receive this and visit: water by birthright water by blood
welcome airful welcome unskinned welcome saltskinned welcome bulletskinned welcome reeking welcome pine-black ghouls Listen I come seeking days I refuse to stop pouring because I refuse to stop pouring Days sprout from haint- tilled soil the Days we cannot yet see require the most mercy the purple earth around me bears weeks: the incessant rain of my libation: the floodplain of my Drink! Drink! Drink! First it is only a hiss that rises Then the deluge of Days coming back into time
yes Akosua yes Akwasi yes Ama Kwame yes Kofi and Afua yes Yaa Yaw Akua Kweku Kwabena and Abena Adjoa and Kojo You well-named You will die only when days die The risen sing back to the teeming soil; coaxing more to our realm uncocooned drink too drink— today be today today: your lustral day Saltwater does not irrigate saltwater cannot grow— But look! look what flowers vein-drunk awash in Asante Eden
Ayan Iwo Ayan Agalu1 Asoro gi Awon omo e to won ngbe o korum yi o You Ayan Agalu the wood that speaks your children carry you around their necks Ayan you teach us the tribes of wood those warring those at peace And that tree bark is first a sponge of sound Wood planted by waters will carry the chords of streams Wood in the midst of wind will whistle and wheeze The beat made from carved wood is an ancestry of speech Ayan you desire the wood closest to human speech So for your drums we harvest trees from the market square their bark wrinkled in the chapters of our tongues
Ayan I planted a tree outside the bedchamber I share with my lover Its bark is ringed in the timbre of our exhales the hours of our laughter the chanting of our rows Ayan this is the tree I have sacrificed and shaped into a dundun the war has returned and we the drummers are driven to the vanguard Ayan what the troops hear as a marching rhythm are the whispers of my lover released to air speech that yearns for conversation but receives only echo in return
1 Orisha of wood and drumming
Ayan Reprise Ayan Agalu we have lost the war I am aboard a salt-stenched vessel my hands are silenced Ayan Agalu it has been four nights I am commanded to drum once in the morning once in the afternoon the head of the drum I am given is blood-taut with reeking wood Ayan Agalu they have found a second drummer they do not know that the beat she shapes is a hex Ayan Agalu this beat is the only tongue I can discern Ayan the drummers are scattered
Transcript: 

A lot of my work tries to decolonize time and tries to root it back in more indigenous West African cosmologies. So the process of pouring libation is usually done before important ceremonies like naming ceremonies, funerals, even birthdays, right? And its purpose is to conjure the spirits of ancestors to also join in with the merriment of those who are gathered, to ensure that the ceremony is successful or to ensure that the ceremony has their blessing.  

So when I'm engaging with time in that poem, it’s this idea of black eternity. Like everyone gathered is present, right? But we're also able to conjure those who came before us. To also continue this culture, these traditions, et cetera. And it was also sparked by this idea of malleable time. Like the various portals in which we in our present worlds can conjure and also manipulate time.  

And many of the names that I mention in the poem itself, they also come from my tribe’s practice of Kradin or “soul names,” which are names given to children based on their day of birth. So like my name Kweku——it signifies that I’m born on Wednesday and every day of the week has its own deity or god. Think of it almost like star signs, right? Sagittarius, Scorpio, et cetera. But for us it's based on the day of the week.  

When I was writing the collection I’m like, okay, like what would it mean for us who come from this system of naming that is so bound in time to also be impacted by something as earth-shattering and traumatic as colonization or enslavement? If you come from a place where your children are days of the week, if you lose a child, you've lost a day of the week. And how does that then render your experience of time? Does it make your time go faster? Does it slow down your time? So those are all kind of questions that I was trying to answer through the collection as well. 
Born in the Gambia, Kweku Abimbola earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He is of Gambian, Ghanaian, Sierra Leonean, and Nigerian descent. Abimbola’s first full-length poetry collection, Saltwater Demands a Psalm, was published by Graywolf Press in April of 2023. The debut collection received the First Book Award from the Academy of American Poets in 2022. He has work published and forthcoming in Shade Literary Arts, 20.35 Africa, The Common, Obsidian, SUNU Journal, and elsewhere. Abimbola’s writing primarily investigates colonization, Black mourning, Black boyhood, gender politics, and the spiritual consequences of climate change in West Africa.