Touch the Pencil First – Guest Poetry Blog #27 – Introducing the Latest Contributor, Ghanaian Poet and Fiction and Non-Fiction Writer Tryphena Yeboah – Part One of Two

Ghanaian poet, fiction and non-fiction writer, Tryphena Yeboah

GENESIS

I listen for a sound, a voice, a whispered word
swept in by the wind to get me from here to there—
where the page before me becomes
more than its blankness, its white silence.
But it is all quiet and awfully clean
here too, with my dishes washed and dried,
my clothes folded and tucked away,
my wooden floors swept and polished,
and my desk, this very one, emptied of its little
distractions of photographs, cards, and letters.
Having gotten in my way by filling my time
with the boring, necessary stuff of life, I sit at last.
The sun’s intrusive glare cuts through
my dusty window and I am now at my point of despair.
Anything can happen. I touch the pencil first,
one finger along its body, before I lift it.
This is me giving the day one small hopeful attempt.
This is me slowly returning to a stubborn first love.
I listen and the only sound is that of movement
as I inch myself toward the page and begin.

Tryphena Yeboah, previously unpublished

RICHARD INTRODUCES  GUEST POETRY BLOGGER # 27, TRYPHENA YEBOAH, AND PART ONE OF HER TWO-PART SERIES

There are a lot of poems out there about writing. But this one, Genesis, by the Ghanaian writer Tryphena Yeboah, seems to capture the fear of facing the blank page with a special acuity. The first four lines of the poem espcially draw me into the “isness” of what she is describing:

I listen for a sound, a voice, a whispered word
swept in by the wind to get me from here to there—
where the page before me becomes
more than its blankness, its white silence.

The lyrical magic of Tryphena Yeboah, which you can see in her description of a blank page as white silence, gobsmacked me when I first encountered it in her 2020 chapbook, A Mouthful of Home published as part of one of the chapbook sets in the acclaimed series: New-Generation African Poets edited by poets Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani. Tryphena’s book was included in the 2020 chapbook box set called Saba. The ninth set titled, Tisa, was released last year.

To see my post from April 2023 on Tryphena please click here and to see my post from October 2021 please click here. Born and raised in Ghana, Tryphena has been studying in  the United States since 2019. A productive and creative time for her including winning the prestigous 2021 Narrative Prize awarded to trhe work of a new or emerging writer published in Narrative the preceding year. Past winners include notable younger-generation writers in the US: Ocean Vuong, Paisley Redekal, Javier Zamora, Natalie Diaz and Michael Dickman among others.

Tryphena’s connection with Kwame Dawes, winner of many poetry prizes and an Emmy award, did not end with her chapbook. She is a PH.D student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is the Research Managing Assistant to Kwame who is a professor in the English department there. And in February she interviewed Kwame about his most recent poetry publication, Sturge Town for the University of Southern Illinois Review. While Kwame was born in Ghana he grew up and spent many years in Jamaica. Sturge Town is the site of the ruined ancestral home of the Dawes family.

Two quotes of Kwame’s from his interview with Tryphena could also define the essence and impact of Tryphena’s poetry. This first quote by Kwame describes for me what her poetry accomplishes: And poetry finds a path to our understanding that makes truth, sometimes, the healing beauty. Not always, but sometimes. And it is worth finding out. I think here of the elegies she has written, for her friend Jedidiah, her father and another, On Grief, dedicated to her fiance’s late mother, Esther. The truth held within the searing cries of grief. And in naming that grief the healing that can come from this. This excerpt from her poem On Grief  from Agbowó literary journal in January 2024.

How dare you to ask me to dig the hard earth.

To make a different kind of room. Underground. Hidden.

To slowly let  down something I used to hold.

To keep it away from the light. From the living.
Empty. All of it. All of me.

And the second also captures the essence of where her poetry has led her. It also describes how writing and especially poetry have brought her to a greater understanding of her life experiences as she explains in her post below. Kwame’s quote:

Poetry, for me, is a way to think and feel deeply about these heightened experiences and in the “telling” to arrive at a better understanding of what has happened and where we are in the midst of these things. This is what poetry is for me as a maker of poetry.

This quote seems particularly apt considering her poem Puppy Love in her post below which is a tribute/elegy to a young man, Jedidiah whom she was close to at school and who who died ten years before she wrote her poem to him. Her greater understanding of him and their relationship as she writes the poem. Here, an excerpt:

from PUPPY LOVE
For Jed

I should not be the one to write this, and yet
no one else would do. Our classmates have chosen
me in the same way one picks a gift—carefully
and with intention. So I say yes, I will write
your tribute. I will trace the roots, do the
unburying, recover all that is nestled and hidden
deep. It’s been ten years after all, and they’ve
tracked me down, holding on to the silly idea
of us. They have remembered all your wanting
because you never cared to hide it.

Such a pleasure to introduce Tryphena Yeboah and part one of her two guest blog posts.

TRYPHENA YEBOAH’S GUEST POETRY BLOG POST # 27 – PART ONE OF TWO

PERSONAL NARRATIVE

My relationship with words began with journaling. I had different kinds of journals—the ones that came with a lock and key, a brown leatherbound diary belonging to my father that he never filled up, and all kinds of notebooks.

I have always been a sensitive person and even now, I’m still learning to not take everything to heart, to be able to let things go without giving in to my tendency of taking whatever is placed on me, slicing it open, and coming up with fifty interpretations of what someone said, and how they said it, and why.

Writing was something I had to do. I can’t imagine walking around with the thoughts and fears that I had (and still have) and not having a way to not only put them down, but also to see them clearly, to interrogate what I saw and felt. I wrote about my day, my friendships, silly things that happened at school, dark things that happened at home.

Language became a way to make tangible my often-hidden emotions, what I was too afraid to admit or say out loud, my curiosities and questions about the world and my place in it. Writing letters was another thing I enjoyed; my mother was away in another country most of my childhood, so my father would gather my brothers and me, and we would write her letters. I remember my excitement, and how much I wanted to share everything about our lives and our days (I also kept asking her to give me a baby sister over the distance, somehow).

Whenever I think of my earliest memories of writing, what comes to mind is the intimacy of it all, how it really began as a private experience for me. Something I did for myself, for my survival, my thinking, my being. It has always been a solitary endeavor, one in which I have control over its production, content, and access. Writing creatively and with the understanding that other people might read and come to the piece with their identities, knowledge, and expectations has been an interesting terrain to navigate, but a meaningful one nonetheless.

When my father passed away in 2013, I wrote more poems than I’d ever written and read just as much. There was an urgency to my practice, and I think that’s when things started to shape up. I was writing a lot of poems—very short ones—and posting them on my Instagram. I hadn’t read a craft book, and knew nothing about rhyming scheme or structure.

Much of what I wrote at the time was influenced by poets I was reading online including Warsan Shire, Yrsa Daley‑Ward, Amanda Torroni, Lang Leav, Rupi Kaur, and Alison Malee, among others. I didn’t even have their books. I read and reread the pieces they posted on Instagram; I became so familiar with their work, their style, and their voice. It amazed me what they were doing with language, how their words made me feel, and perhaps I was most drawn to the subjects they wrote about—the body, love and fear, longing and desire, loss and grief. The more I read, the more I felt less alone, felt seen, and also discovered that there is language for this, too. This thing that I’m feeling and can’t name nor understand.

When I started writing poems, all I knew was that I needed to first be honest with myself. I’m grateful for that intentionality which, I suspect, has kept me grounded in my practice. And I hope I continue to come to the page this way, with some sincerity of thought, as I write myself towards hope, memory, beauty, and love. To not write for applause or the absence of critique, to not pander to an audience, and to not lose myself in the politics of the publishing industry.

It is true that much of an artist’s work is an extension of who they are, even if to the slightest degree, and when I look at anything I’ve created, it’ll be sad to not recognize who I am in that artistic expression or to feel estranged from my work. And yet, I am not my work. I am so much more than what I put down on a page. See, even now, I am so full of contradictions. How can I not write?

PUPPY LOVE
For Jed

I should not be the one to write this, and yet
no one else would do. Our classmates have chosen
me in the same way one picks a gift—carefully
and with intention. So I say yes, I will write
your tribute. I will trace the roots, do the
unburying, recover all that is nestled and hidden
deep. It’s been ten years after all, and they’ve
tracked me down, holding on to the silly idea
of us. They have remembered all your wanting
because you never cared to hide it.

It was impossible to get away from you–
You with your bright eyes and that easy wide smile.
You with your big afro, and the comb you drove through it.
All your sweet talking, your honey low whisperings.
You with your hands reaching for me in the dark,
one finger, then two, gently weaving into mine.

How can I speak for an entire class
when my grief feels singular, my memories of you
are only of you and me—talking and leaning into each other,
your falling silent, your eager listening, and then
your promises of what you would do, how you would
love, how you would care. I did not believe a word of it.
There I was: always refusing, always running, and there you were:
your voice, humming close and teasing me to shyness,
your gaze, steady and pinned on me and only me.

I know, I know, we grew up and grew apart and
nothing is like it used to be—starting with you. Gone.
Where do I place this strange sense of missing?
It is ticking in my head, jolting me restless, spreading
fast in my chest, this ache. After all this time, all the
silence between us, my body should be the last inhabitable
place for this, and yet here it is: the terror of this loss
has broken through our muted worlds and breached my heart.

You’re gone and I’m here and in people’s minds, it is still you and me—
despite the lost years. It has always been you and me. And so I begin:
When Jedidiah walked into a room, it was hard to miss him.
I always saw you first.
His charming smile reached his eyes instantly.
My beautiful, beautiful boy.
We will miss his arms around us for every hug he’s given,
I will miss you and the ways you held me.
his voice bursting through the room,
What I’ll give to hear you say my name.
the sound of his unrestrained laughter,
I want to see your body move with song,
the attentive and determined look in his eyes.
I wish you would look at me one last time.

Tryphena Yeboah, previously unpublished