The Adinkra Poetry Prize, which began in 2022 as part of a public humanities project conceived through the UNH Summer Institute in Public Humanities by Prof. Rachel Afia Ansong, has become a grounding force for many Ghanaian poets. Through its carefully crafted workshops, publications, and residency programs, the prize has offered a space where writers can deepen their craft while engaging the rich heritage of Adinkra symbols. Each year, one of the 200+ symbols is chosen, and poets are invited to respond with original work, braiding personal meaning with cultural memory and, in the process, helping to shape an international community of Ghanaian writers both at home and across the diaspora.
Christopher Armoh, the 2025 winner of the prize, meets here in conversation with Dr. Tryphena Yeboah as two writers shaped by community, curiosity, and a quiet devotion to language. Christopher brings the growing voice of a poet whose work is finding its way into classrooms and circles of readers, while Dr. Yeboah carries the seasoned perspective of a writer whose poems, stories, and essays have traveled widely.
Dr. Yeboah is the author of A Mouthful of Home, a winner of the Narrative Prize, a recent Caine Prize finalist, and a Pushcart honoree. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Chicago Review of Books, Lit Hub, and many other spaces where attentive writing is cherished. She teaches at Tennessee Wesleyan University, guiding new writers as both a professor and Director of Creative Writing.
CA: Hello Dr. Tryphena Yeboah, it’s such an honor to be in conversation with you. I’m grateful to Dr. Afia Ansong for making this possible. I’ve admired your work for some time, so this feels like a gift!
Winning the 2025 Adinkra Poetry Prize has been humbling for me, and it’s had me thinking a lot about what writing means, both personally and in the lives of others. I’d love to begin by asking: what does poetry mean to you? And when you think about the role of poetry in our community, what feels most urgent to you right now?
TY: Thank you for your kind words, Christopher, and congratulations on winning the 2025 Adinkra Poetry Prize! What an incredible achievement–I read your piece “In the Likeness of a Bird” and really loved the beautiful bird motif you employed to reflect on the selflessness and sacrifices of motherhood. I echo your gratitude for Afia, who continues to challenge me with her dedication to growing literary communities in Ghana and creating opportunities for writers to learn and grow together. Of course, there’s also what the world does not openly see–her generosity, steady friendship, and her patience in listening to me complain about my first time teaching! I’ll join the Afia Ansong fan club anytime!
Now regarding poetry, I suspect I may have answered this question differently at different times in my life but I hope what continues to come across, at the very heart of it, is that poetry is my way of paying attention to the world–both in reading and writing poems. I turn to poetry for big and small things. Yesterday, I shared Mary Oliver’s poem “I Worried” with my colleague after we talked about how we still have so much to do despite the fall break. Just this morning, I read Nikki Giovanni’s poem about her first memory of librarians, and it took me back to my childhood, to my afterschool days of waiting for my father in teacher Harriet’s garage filled with books. It’s hard to find the language to describe this, and maybe that is also another reason we turn to poetry–to attempt to tangibly grasp that which may be slipping from our hands, to approximate and make sense of things, to read about a stranger’s private experience and see yourself on the page, too.
What feels most urgent to me right now? I am not sure whether you mean in my writing or in my life (although those worlds do get blurred every now and then), but if I have to be very honest, everything feels urgent to me and that’s a very serious problem ha! I am a bit too intense for my own good. I have so much fear, so much trepidation about my life, about the world. I work too hard and think everything is an emergency. I am learning to surrender a little. To let go of the maddening impulse to be anything other than a human who needs a little love, a little hope, and a little nap here and there.
CA: I’m definitely joining the Afia Ansong club too, although I suspect there’s a long waiting list already. I relate a bit too much to working too hard and everything feeling like an emergency. Poetra Asantewa’s poem, Capitalism, available on her Spotify page captures my life right now and that’s one of the many reasons why I love poetry so much! Poetry was something I stumbled into out of grief and it has since been my safe space. How did you first come to love poetry and what made you stay?
TY: I certainly relate to turning to poetry in times of grief, and I am encouraged to know you found some refuge in writing. I think it started with two things for me: journaling and reading. I’ve kept a journal for as long as I can remember. Even before I knew anything about imagery and metaphors, I was always reaching for words and attempting to make meaning. I remember reading Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitters Club series, books by Nora Roberts, John Grisham, and Danielle Steel. Evidently, I came to poetry much later, sometime in 2015, I think. I did not have any poetry books at the time so my first introduction to poetry was through social media. I found myself in a world of poem snippets through the feed of writers like Safia Elhillo, Nikitta Gill, Allison Malee, Christopher Poindexter, etc. It was truly the coolest thing to see how they strung words together on a square cropped white background. I read them obsessively. I took screenshots of them so I could return to them. I don’t know what it was about it, but I found myself wanting more of those tiny poems, wanting to fill my mind and heart with them. And the more intensely I wanted to read them, the more earnestly I desired to write them, too. And I did, having no clue what I was doing and whether I was doing it right.
CA: This is incredible! I love hearing about your genesis story to poeming. I don’t think I’ve fully embraced journaling, but I think it’s time I do it intentionally. And I must confess, I like taking screenshots of poems too. I call them mood boards—though, truthfully, I rarely return to them when I’m writing. These days, I save links instead(to save up memory space on my phone) And even with all that inspiration saved up, the act of writing can feel cumbersome and strangely solitary. I know relationships and their complexities are at the center of your writing, which makes me wonder: what does community mean to you as a writer? And how have you used community in your creative life?
TY: Oh yes, so much! Austin Kleon conducts these typewriter interviews and I like what he calls “a creative lineage.” It can be a tricky question to answer because we’re afraid of forgetting names or not recognizing other key influences in our creative journey. But let me attempt to simplify and capture my creative family tree to convey just how utterly miserable I would be without the community of writers I’ve been so blessed to have. Remember the poems I started to write and share on Instagram after reading other people’s work? Yes. The magnificent Ama Asantewa read those poems and recommended me for the African Poetry Book Fund Chapbook. To my surprise, Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani accepted the manuscript (and Dawes would later serve as my Chair in my PhD program). Just around that time, Nana Prempeh had seen my work on social media and sent me a message on Twitter, nudging me to apply to Chapman University’s Creative Writing program. To my surprise again, I was awarded a fellowship that brought me to the U.S. in 2019 and changed the trajectory of my life. At Chapman and later the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I was surrounded by some of the most incredible teachers, mentors, and colleagues. Creative writing workshops are one thing, but building relationships with writers beyond the walls of a classroom is an entirely different experience that I feel truly honored to have. It brings me to tears when I think about the magnitude of this gift. Welp. I guess I now see why people dodge this question; it’s almost impossible to cram every moment and name in the narrative, which I suppose is a good challenge because it communicates just how much has been poured into me, how many shoulders have carried me, how often people have seen in me what I never dare to see in myself. The fabric of my life is a mosaic of many trusted and nurturing voices, and my gratitude for them is boundless!
CA: I agree! You cannot acknowledge your community without forgetting some names and sometimes it feels so bland to not mention certain names and acknowledge them properly.
I appreciate how you describe Ama Asantewa, “the magnificent.” Ama is a nation builder and I love her for it! When I think of Ama Asantewa Diaka, I think of the living and ancestral currents she carries into her work. As Poetra Asantewa, she has shaped so many spaces, from Black Girls Glow to Tampered Press. Her poems in You Too Will Know Me, Woman, Eat Me Whole, and her recent poetry album For All Of Us feel rooted and luminous. She also served as a judge for the 2025 Adinkra Poetry Prize with poet laureate Prof. Kwaku Abimbola, and it means a great deal to have both of them read my work with such care. Their presence reminds me how community stretches across generations, guiding the work we do and the paths we inherit.
Thinking about community this way also brings me back to your own journey. Massive respect and congratulations to you on your collection, A Mouthful of Home. It’s inspiring to know that you’re one of the youngest Ghanaian poets published by the African Poetry Book Fund. Looking back, what did that moment feel like for you then, and how does it feel now? Did it change how you saw yourself as a poet, or how you thought about the responsibility of your work?
TY: Oh thank you, Christopher! I am trying to put myself back there. The boxset was released in July 2020. I was in my first year at Chapman University. My first year in a new country. Covid lockdown was underway and all my classes were moved online. I was homesick. I was still reeling from the shock of George Floyd’s death. I was afraid and uncertain about my days. I felt at once completely trapped in a foreign place and utterly uprooted and suspended from reality. I spent so much time sitting in my very small apartment, curled up in bed, and sitting by the window looking out. I don’t remember much about that season because it was terribly isolating and it all feels like such a blur now. But I am sure I was elated and clueless about what to do with my excitement. We were all isolated. There was no one to hug or sit together to read with. I had a book of poems I’d been writing without any clue they’d become a book someday. I suspect I felt too many conflicting emotions. Dawes and Abani were just spectacular.
You ask about how it felt then. It might sound weird, but I particularly recall feeling a sense of shame and speaking with my teacher, Samantha Dunn, about it. It was an odd emotion given the circumstance and I did not quite understand why I felt that way. It was like looking through an old photo album and being washed over with embarrassment for what you thought was cool back then. You look at the younger version of yourself in some godawful clothes and outdated poses. All you want to do is hide the old photographs and show people just how much you’ve grown, how you’re nothing like what’s been captured. I felt something akin to that. There was no doubt some imposter syndrome at play too, which, even now, continues to gnaw at me. Again, because of the marvelous blessing of the community, I did not stay in my head for too long. I was reminded to embrace all the parts of my journey, which includes my young and unsure voice on the page. Of course, five years in and I would give anything to have a bit of that innocence, and to approach my work with the kind of playfulness, risk, and freedom of the past. These days, I overthink everything and get in my head a lot!
CA: I relate to what you said about that strange sense of shame. It’s such an unexpected emotion to feel in a moment of joy. When I won the 2025 Adinkra Poetry Prize, I remember feeling something similar—not shame exactly, but this tightening in my chest whenever I was around the other shortlisted poets. They’re some of the most brilliant, generous people I know, and yet I couldn’t quite meet their eyes without feeling a flicker of guilt. I was proud, yes, but also hyper-aware of how easily it could have been any of them. I found myself overthinking the smallest interactions—trying to sound the same, to keep the same warmth and energy I had before the announcement. It’s a strange balance, isn’t it? The joy of being seen and the fear of what that visibility might cost in friendship or humility. I love how you put it: “embracing the younger, unsure voice and all its awkwardness.” I think I’m still learning that too—how to let the gratitude exist alongside the discomfort, without letting one cancel out the other.
Ever since my poem Focus on Africa was included in the KNUST curriculum, and I won the Adinkra Poetry Prize, I’ve felt this quiet pressure—a sense of responsibility to create work that leaves nothing to chance, work that might, somehow, outlive me. To be able to write a poem is a gift, but also a weight, because I sometimes find myself over-editing, second-guessing every line before it’s even fully formed. You’ve spoken beautifully about the role of community in your journey, but I wonder, how did you actually learn to release that pressure and trust yourself again on the page? Because community helps, yes, but there are moments when it’s just you and the work. How do you loosen your grip in those moments?
TY: That’s an apt description of how I often feel in the world of academia! There’s certainly a real sense of imposter syndrome that takes over and, even now, I am still navigating that territory. For someone who has always been so nervous of public speaking and has never felt like the smartest person in the room, my job is to show up each week in front of students and engage with new ideas. I can’t tell you how scared it makes me. During my first year of teaching, I was convinced that everyone could see right through me, look beyond my performative shield of collectedness and call me a fraud. When “The Dishwashing Women” was selected for the Pushcart in 2021, one of the first things I decided was to not have this send me into some kind of frenzy where I would feel compelled to write the next best story. I don’t know why it was so important for me to protect myself that way. Maybe it's because I knew that it would be a maddening endeavor, and that I wouldn't have any fun attempting to write with that kind of pressure over my head. That’s precisely the kind of impulse that would stop me dead in my tracks. I don’t know that I’ll ever write a story like that again, and there’s something freeing about that admission. I’ll write other kinds of stories. I hope a few get picked up, but I am also aware of the reality and possibility of rejections, of drafts that never make it out into the world. I have and will continue to make peace with that even as I keep doing the work, forging a creative path that endures through the different seasons of my life.
I don’t know that I have fully learned to release my grip. I might try to on some days, and that might look like simply showing up and writing, even if badly. To write without the end goal of publishing or getting noticed. To write just because I want to. I tell myself that it’s okay if this goes nowhere. Don’t many stories start that way, with the writer only knowing one small detail and deciding to take a risk and see where it leads? I think so. So I try to remind myself that I don’t have to know how the poem or story will unfold; I just have to start. I don’t always listen to myself, of course, but I think it's good practice. Another thing I do is trick myself to just write a little at a time. Word after word after word is power (Margaret Atwood’s words). If I make myself believe that it does not have to be this laborious task and I can walk away after a paragraph and come back to it, then the stakes feel lower. Although what usually happens is that once I start, I just keep going most of the time. I’ve tricked myself into doing many tasks that way, including heading out for a quick walk around the block, just to realize I’ve taken a one-hour stroll through the neighborhood. Writer Hannah Brencher has talked about how, when she wanted to build a healthy habit of working out, she started by just going to the gym, sitting down and watching others exercise. Then she would head back to her car and drive off. It makes me laugh each time I think of it. But she was talking about the first steps, the small decisions we make that get us where we want to get to. After a few of those moments, you think, why don’t I just pick up the tiniest dumbbell since I’m already here? Why don’t I just walk on this treadmill at the slowest pace possible? I’m a big advocate of starting small and making slow progress. I guess the last thing I do is turn to books. I read other people’s work. When it all gets a little overwhelming and daunting, I take a step back and get lost in the words of others. It gives me hope, and there’s no better company than good, luminous prose.