Nii Parkes

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Born in the UK, in 1974^[1], and raised in Ghana (where he attended Achimota School), Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a performance poet, writer and sociocultural commentator. A veteran of several poetry festivals, and former Poet-In-Residence at the Poetry Cafe 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^[2] 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 for his poem Tin Roof ^[3].

Nii runs regular workshops in the UK and has set up a Writer’s Fund in Ghana to promote writing among the country's youth. He has recorded two CDs of his spoken word poetry, Incredible Blues and Nocturne of Phrase, and has published three chapbooks of poetry - eyes of a boy, lips of a man, M is for Madrigal, and the self-published Shorter!^[4], which was put together to raise money for the Writers' Fund initiative. Nii is also the Senior Editor at flipped eye publishing for whom he has edited fourteen two (Editor), Dance the Guns to Silence (Co-Editor with Kadija Sesay) and x-24: unclassified (Co-editor with Tash Aw). Nii's short stories can be found in Tell Tales: Volume I (Tell Tales) and Mechanics Institute Review (Birkbeck) and an excerpt from his second fiction manuscript, Afterbirth^[5], is featured in the New Writing 15 anthology published by Granta in June 2007. In addition to this he contributes articles and poems to magazines and literary journals such as Sable, Poetry News, and The Liberal.

An experienced performer of his work Nii has appeared at readings all over the world, including the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, New York; The Royal Festival Hall, London; and Java, Paris, and often leads writing and performance workshops. He was the Resident poet at Borders Bookstores where he hosted the monthly open mike at Charing Cross Road between 2001 and 2005. He now runs the African Writers' Evening^[6] series at the Poetry Cafe, in Covent Garden.