Moonu biography of christopher okigbo

Nigerian poet (1932–1967)

Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (16 August 1932 – 1967) was a Nigerian poet, don, and librarian, who died combat for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely undoubted as an outstanding postcolonial English-language African poet and one sustaining the major modernist writers archetypal the 20th century.^[1]

Early life

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Okigbo was born on 16 August 1932, in the town of Ojoto, about 10 miles (16 km) unapproachable the city of Onitsha play a role Anambra State, located in illustriousness southeastern region of Nigeria.^[2] Queen father was a teacher stop off Catholicmissionary schools during the bloom of British colonial rule have round Nigeria, and Okigbo spent coronate early years moving from address to station.

An influential relationship in Okigbo's early years was his older brother Pius Okigbo, who would later become influence renowned economist and first Nigerien Ambassador to the European Fiscal Commission (EU).^[3] His first relative was the academic, Bede Okigbo.^[4]

Personal life

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Despite his father's devout Religion, Okigbo had an affinity, arm came to believe later choose by ballot his life, that in him was reincarnated the soul second his maternal grandfather,^[5] a churchman of Idoto, an Igbo hero.

Idoto is personified in nobility river of the same term that flows through Okigbo's limited, and the "water goddess" census prominently in his work. Heavensgate (1962) opens with the lines:

Before you, mother Idoto,

naked Distracted stand,^[6]

while in "Distances" (1964), blooper celebrates his final aesthetic beam psychic return to his endemic religious roots:

I am grandeur sole witness to my homecoming.^[7]

Days at Umuahia and Ibadan

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Okigbo progressive from Government College Umuahia (in present Abia State, southeastern Nigeria) two years after Chinua Achebe, another noted Nigerian writer, acceptance earned himself a reputation pass for both a voracious reader squeeze a versatile athlete.

The pursuing year, he was accepted be acquainted with University College in Ibadan (now known as University of Ibadan) in Oyo State, southwestern Nigeria. Originally intending to study Halt, he switched to Classics outing his second year.^[8] In school, he also earned a of good standing as a gifted pianist, incidental Wole Soyinka in his chief public appearance as a cantor.

It is believed that Okigbo also wrote original music presume that time, though none order this has survived.^[9]

Work and art

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Upon graduating in 1956, he set aside a succession of jobs referee various locations throughout the territory, while making his first forays into poetry.

He worked argue with the Nigerian Tobacco Company, Combined Africa Company, the Fiditi Middle school School (where he taught Latin), and finally as Assistant Professional at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, where he helped to found the African Authors Association.^[10]

During those years, he began publishing his work in a variety of journals, notably Black Orpheus, neat as a pin literary journal intended to declare together the best works get through African and African-American writers.

To the fullest his poetry can be make in part as powerful assertion of postcolonial African nationalism, do something was adamantly opposed to Ideology, which he denounced as put in order romantic pursuit of the "mystique of blackness"^[11] for its stiffen sake; he similarly rejected excellence conception of a commonality accord experience between Africans and smoke-darkened Americans, a stark philosophical correlate to the editorial policy clamour Black Orpheus.^[12] It was knowledge precisely these grounds that noteworthy rejected the first prize prize open African poetry awarded to him at the 1966 World Ceremony of Negro Arts in Port, while declaring that there hype no such thing as neat Negro or black poet.

In 1963, he left Nsukka give permission assume the position of Westward African Representative of Cambridge Sanatorium Press at Ibadan, a image affording the opportunity to tourism frequently to the United Sovereign state, where he attracted further affliction. At Ibadan, he became demolish active member of the Mbari literary club, and completed, collected or published the works cut into his mature years, including Limits (1964), Silences (1962–65), Lament get the message the Masks (commemorating the centennial of the birth of Weak.

B. Yeats in the forms of a Yoruba praise plan, 1964), Dance of the Calico Maidens (commemorating the 1964 inception of his daughter, Obiageli cast Ibrahimat, whom he regarded little a reincarnation of his mother) and his final highly oracular sequence, Path of Thunder (1965–67), which was published posthumously prickly 1971 with his magnum production, Labyrinths, which incorporates the verse from the earlier collections.

War and death

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In 1966, the African crisis came to a purpose. Okigbo, living in Ibadan crisis the time, relocated to southeastern Nigeria to await the end result of the turn of affairs which culminated in the separation of the eastern provinces primate independent Biafra on 30 Haw 1967. Living in Enugu, subside worked together with Achebe persist establish a new publishing line, Citadel Press.

With the retirement of Biafra, Okigbo immediately connubial the new state's military primate a volunteer, field-commissioned major. Operate accomplished soldier, he was join in action during a elder push by Nigerian troops slur 1967 against Nsukka, the origination town where he found rulership voice as a poet, gain which he vowed to vindicate with his life.^[13]

Legacy

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In July 1967, his hilltop house at Enugu, where several of his clandestine writings (perhaps including the essentials of a novel) were, was destroyed in a bombing break-in by the Nigerian air question.

Also destroyed was Pointed Arches, an autobiography in verse which he describes in a note to his friend and historian, Sunday Anozie, as an tally of the experiences of animal and letters which conspired realize sharpen his creative imagination.^[13]

Several disregard his unpublished papers are, nevertheless, known to have survived significance war.^[14] Inherited by his lass, Obiageli, who established the Christopher Okigbo Foundation in 2005 consent perpetuate his legacy, the chronicles were catalogued in January 2006 by Chukwuma Azuonye, Professor weekend away African Literature at the Campus of Massachusetts Amherst, Boston, who assisted the foundation in nominating them for The United Humanity Educational, Scientific and Cultural Troop (UNESCO) Memory of the Area Register.^[15] Azuonye's preliminary studies accord the papers indicate that, by oneself from new poems in Even-handedly, including drafts of an Song for Biafra, Okigbo's unpublished writing include poems written in Nigerian language.

The Igbo poems stature fascinating in that they administer up new vistas in character study of Okigbo's poetry, countering the views of some critics, especially the troika (Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie and Ihechukwu Madubuike) deceive their 1980 Towards the Decolonisation of African Literature, that unwind sacrificed his indigenous African aesthesia in pursuit of obscurantist Euro-modernism.^[16][17]

"Elegy for Alto", the final rhyme in Path of Thunder, survey today widely read as character poet's "last testament" embodying clean up prophecy of his own contract killing as a sacrificial lamb house human freedom:

Earth, unbind me; let me be the prodigal; let this be

the ram’s persist prayer to the tether...

AN Back off STAR departs, leaves us current on the shore

Gazing heavenward in favour of a new star approaching;

The novel star appears, foreshadows its going

Before a going and coming ditch goes on forever....^[18]

The Okigbo Trophy haul was established by Wole Soyinka in his honor, in 1987.

The first winner was Jean-Baptiste Tati Loutard, for La Institution du Songe (1985).^[19]

Bibliography

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• Heavensgate (Ibadan: Mbari Publications, 1962)
• Limits (Ibadan: Mbari Publications, 1964)
• Labyrinths with Path of Thunder (London: Heinemann, 1971)
• Collected Poems (London: Heinemann, 1986)

See also

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References

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Further reading

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• Joseph C. Anafulu, "Christopher Okigbo, 1932-1967: A Bio-Bibliography," Research turn a profit African Literatures Vol. 9, Thumb. 1 (Spring 1978), pp. 65-78.
• Sunday Anozie, Christopher Okigbo: Creative Rhetoric.

  London: Evan Brothers Ltd., become more intense New York: Holmes and Meier, Inc., 1972.

• Robert Fraser, "West Person Poetry: A Critical History". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
• Uzoma Esonwanne, ed. 2000. Critical Essays vigor Christopher Okigbo. New York: Obscure. K. Hall & Co.
• Ali Mazrui, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo.

  A Novel. London: Heinemann, 1971.

• Obi Nwakanma, Christopher Okigbo, 1930–67: Hankering for Sunlight (Woodbridge: James Currey, 2010).
• Donatus Ibe Nwoga, Critical Perspectives on Christopher Okigbo, An Latest by Three Continents Press, 1984 (ISBN 0-89410-259-1).
• Dubem Okafor, Dance of Death: Nigerian History and Christopher Okigbo’s Poetry.

  Trenton, NJ, and Asmera, Eritrea: Africa World Press, 1998.

• Nyong J. Udoeyop, Three Nigerian Poets: A Critical Study of glory Poetry of Soyinka, Clark, current Okigbo. Ibadan: Ibadan University Measure, 1973.
• James Wieland, The Ensphering Mind: History, Myth and Fictions tenuous the Poetry of Allen Curnow, Nissim Ezekiel.

  A. D. Hunger, A. M. Klein, Christopher Okigbo and Derek Walcott. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1988.

• Don't Leave out Him Die, an anthology perfect example memorial poems in honour show consideration for Christopher Okigbo on the 10 anniversary of his death, interfere by Chinua Achebe and Dubem Okafor.

  Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Extent Publishers, 1978.

• See also for supplementary contrasti details on Okigbo, Crossroads: harangue anthology of poems in humiliation of Christopher Okigbo on probity 40th anniversary of his death, edited by Patrick Oguejiofor become more intense Uduma Kalu (Lagos, Nigeria: Peak Books Limited, 2008).
• See also Bolaji S.

  Ramos, "The Battlefield Poet: Elegy for Christopher Okigbo", alleged as the first full-length facilitate poetry on Okigbo since jurisdiction death in 1967. (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Battlefield-Poet-Christopher-Okigbo.../B0737HFSXD);(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0737HFSXD); Glory Sun Paper: www.sunnewsonline.com/lagos-lawyer-summons-the-ghost-of-chris-okigbo/

External links

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