 A veteran of several poetry festivals, and former poet-in-residence at the Poetry Café in London, he has performed poetry in the United Kingdom, Europe, Ghana and the United States and was a 2005 Associate Artist-In-Residence with BBC Radio 3.In 2007 he was British Council writer-in-residence at California State University, Los Angeles and became one of the youngest living writers (along with Owen Sheers and Choman Hardi) featured in the Poems on the Underground programme in London with his poem "Tin Roof".Parkes runs regular workshops in the UK and set up a Writer's Fund in Ghana to promote writing among the country's youth.