Profile
"Okantah explores what it means to be a black poet during hard times....
There is wisdom in his words and a love for Africa in his heart. [His] poems cry like the birds we once heard in Eric Dolphy's horn."
--E. Ethelbert Miller
Okantah is the author of Afreeka Brass (1983), Collage (1984),
Legacy: for Martin & Malcolm (1987), Cheikh Anta Diop: Poem for the Living (1997/2017), Reconnecting Memories: Dreams No Longer Deferred (2004), Muntu Kuntu Energy: New and Selected Poetry (2013), Guerrilla Dread: Poetry for Hearts and Minds (2019) and his latest, A Black Voice in the Wilderness (2024). A Professor and Chair of the Department of Africana Studies at Kent State University, he is also Director of the Ghana Study Abroad Program. A 2019 BMe Community Genius Fellow, he is also the recipient of the 2021 Great Lakes Black Authors Expo, Alice Dunbar Nelson Literary Achievement Award. He has performed with the Iroko African Drum & Dance Society, with the Cavani String Quartet and with Vince Robinson and the Jazz Poets.
