Getting Up

Gladys Casely-Hayford, read by Newgatenovelist (LibriVox)

“Getting Up” follows a small Fante child waking, from the first yawn to tumbling out of bed. Published in The Messenger in June 1926. The last lines use a word for a Black child that was common then and is offensive now; it is read as printed. Gladys Casely-Hayford (1904–1950) was a poet whose mother was a Krio educator from Freetown. She taught at the Girls' Vocational School in Freetown and wrote some of her poems in Krio. This reading is by a LibriVox volunteer.