Renowned Ghanaian Poet, Prof. Awoonor killed in Kenya mall attack

Renowned Ghanaian poet and statesman Kofi Awoonor was among the 59 people confirmed dead in an attack by Somali Islamist militants on a Nairobi shopping mall, Ghana's president said Sunday.

Awoonor, 78, was killed and his son was wounded at the Westgate mall, Ghana's Deputy Information Minister Felix Kwakye Ofosu said. Awoonor had been due to appear at the Storymoja Hay literary festival in Nairobi on Saturday.

Kwame Dawes, a cousin of Awoonor as well as a poet who was in Nairobi at the time of the attack, said Awoonor and his son were not together when the shooting started. "I think the son went to pick up something at the mall. Professor Awoonor was in the parking garage waiting for him," Dawes, a professor in the United States who is editing Awoonor's latest poetry collection, told AFP by telephone. "The son was shot while he was inside the mall. We don't know at what point the professor was shot," Dawes said.

Awoonor was Ghana's representative to the United Nations under the presidency of Jerry Rawlings from 1990 to 1994. He was also president of the Council of State, an advisory body to the president, a post he left earlier this year.He was most noted for his poetry inspired by the oral tradition of the Ewe people, to which he belonged.Much of his best work was published in Ghana's immediate post-independence period, part of which he spent in exile after the first president and post-colonial icon Kwame Nkrumah, to whom Awoonor was close, was overthrown in a coup.His books included "Rediscovery and Other Poems", published in 1964.