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Book of the Week: Scaring Crow: A Collection of Haiku by Ghanaian Poet Adjei Agyei-Baah

Adjei Agyei-Baah is the author of Afriku (Red Moon Press, 2016), Ghana,21 Haiku (Mamba Africa Press, 2017), Piece of My Fart (2018), Finding the Other Door (2021) and Mamelon a Mamelon (Edition Unicite, 2021). He is the co-founder of the Africa Haiku Network and The Mamba. Adjei teaches English and Literature at the University of Ghana’s School of Continuing and Distance Education and is currently pursuing his PhD studies at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.

Scaring Crow is a collection of 102 haiku, all about scarecrows. In the Foreword, Hiroaki Sato provides a brief and interesting discussion on scarecrows in various cultures. OPEN: The Journal of Arts & Letters has an excellent video of Scaring Crow Excerpts and in a review of Scaring Crow, Gregory Piko writes “Throughout the book, Adjei presents strong images and finds fresh ways of relating the scarecrow’s interaction with birds, the farmer and the seasons.”

Examples of haiku from Scaring Crow include:

grandpa’s will
all his clothes go
to the scarecrow

ripened field−
an old scarecrow invites
birds to party

full moon
the scarecrow watches
its own shadow

midnight banter
the drunken farmer
and a scarecrow

You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library and please share your favorite poem from the book with us.

Do you have a chapbook published in 2016 or earlier that you would like featured as a Book of the Week? Contact us for details. Haiku featured in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by THF Digital Librarian Dan Campbell and are used with permission.

Adjei Agyei-Baah

This Post Has 4 Comments

  2. Adjei, such evocative haiku. I enjoyed reading it. Thank you, Seretta Martin

  3. strong autumn wind –
    the constant shaking no
    of the rag doll

    upcoming thunderstorm –
    the field doll di caprio
    with titanic move

  4. Thank you, Dan, and Adjei for making this 2022 book available. An engaging read. I particularly liked::

    after the storm
    the scarecrow shows
    the wind’s path

    —

    parting mist…
    the open arms
    of a scarecrow

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