Nii Parkes

Nii Ayikwei Parkes (born 1 April 1974) born in the UK to parents from Ghana, where he was raised, is a performance poet, writer and sociocultural commentator. He is one of 39 writers aged under 40 from sub-Saharan Africa who in April 2014 were named as part of the Hay Festival's prestigious Africa39 project.

Biography

Born in the UK, Nii Parkes was raised in Ghana, where he was educated at Achimota School. His first editorial role was in 1988 working on his school magazine, The Achimotan, and he went on to co-found, at the age of 17, filla! magazine, Ghana’s first student-run national magazine. Parkes subsequently studied in England at Manchester Metropolitan University. While there, he emerged as a performance poet and was also a member of the Black Writer's Group of Commonword.

A veteran of several poetry festivals, and former poet-in-residence at the Poetry Café in London, he has performed poetry in the UK, Europe, Ghana and the US and was a 2005 Associate Artist-In-Residence with BBC Radio 3. In 2007 he was British Council writer-in-residence at California State University, Los Angeles and became one of the youngest living writers (along with Owen Sheers and Choman Hardi) featured in the Poems on the Underground programme in London with his poem "Tin Roof".