Christopher Okigbo
Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo | |
---|---|
Born | Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo 16 August 1932 Ojoto, Anambra State, British Nigeria |
Died | 1967 (aged 34–35) Nsukka, Nigeria |
Occupation | Writer |
Education | Government College Umuahia; University College Ibadan |
Genre | Drama, poetry |
Subject | Comparative literature |
Relatives | Pius Okigbo (brother) |
Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (16 August 1932 – 1967) was a Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as an outstanding postcolonial English-language African poet and one of the major modernist writers of the 20th century.[1]
Early life
Okigbo was born on 16 August 1932, in the town of
- Before you, mother Idoto,
- naked I stand,[4]
- Before you, mother Idoto,
while in "Distances" (1964), he celebrates his final aesthetic and psychic return to his indigenous religious roots:
- I am the sole witness to my homecoming.[5]
Another influential figure in Okigbo's early years was his older brother
Days at Umuahia and Ibadan
Okigbo graduated from Government College Umuahia (in present Abia State, Nigeria) two years after Chinua Achebe, another noted Nigerian writer, having earned himself a reputation as both a voracious reader and a versatile athlete. The following year, he was accepted to University College in Ibadan (now known as University of Ibadan). Originally intending to study Medicine, he switched to Classics in his second year.[7] In college, he also earned a reputation as a gifted pianist, accompanying Wole Soyinka in his first public appearance as a singer. It is believed that Okigbo also wrote original music at that time, though none of this has survived.[8]
Work and art
Upon graduating in 1956, he held a succession of jobs in various locations throughout the country, while making his first forays into poetry. He worked at the Nigerian Tobacco Company, United Africa Company, the Fiditi Grammar School (where he taught Latin), and finally as Assistant Librarian at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, where he helped to found the African Authors Association.[9]
During those years, he began publishing his work in various journals, notably
In 1963, he left Nsukka to assume the position of West African Representative of
War
In 1966 the
With the secession of Biafra, Okigbo immediately joined the new state's military as a volunteer, field-commissioned major. An accomplished soldier, he was killed in action during a major push by Nigerian troops against Nsukka, the university town where he found his voice as a poet, and which he vowed to defend with his life.[12]
Legacy
In July 1967, his hilltop house at Enugu, where several of his unpublished writings (perhaps including the beginnings of a novel) were, was destroyed in a bombing raid by the Nigerian air force. Also destroyed was Pointed Arches, an autobiography in verse which he describes in a letter to his friend and biographer, Sunday Anozie, as an account of the experiences of life and letters which conspired to sharpen his creative imagination.[12]
Several of his unpublished papers are, however, known to have survived the war.[13] Inherited by his daughter, Obiageli, who established the Christopher Okigbo Foundation in 2005 to perpetuate his legacy, the papers were catalogued in January 2006 by Chukwuma Azuonye, Professor of African Literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Boston, who assisted the foundation in nominating them for The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Memory of the World Register.[14] Azuonye's preliminary studies of the papers indicate that, apart from new poems in English, including drafts of an Anthem for Biafra, Okigbo's unpublished papers include poems written in Igbo language. The Igbo poems are fascinating in that they open up new vistas in the study of Okigbo's poetry, countering the views of some critics, especially the troika (Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie and Ihechukwu Madubuike) in their 1980 Towards the Decolonization of African Literature, that he sacrificed his indigenous African sensibility in pursuit of obscurantist Euro-modernism.[15][16]
"Elegy for Alto", the final poem in Path of Thunder, is today widely read as the poet's "last testament" embodying a prophecy of his own death as a sacrificial lamb for human freedom:
- Earth, unbind me; let me be the prodigal; let this be
- the ram’s ultimate prayer to the tether...
- AN OLD STAR departs, leaves us here on the shore
- Gazing heavenward for a new star approaching;
- The new star appears, foreshadows its going
- Before a going and coming that goes on forever....[17]
The Okigbo Award was established by Wole Soyinka in his honor, in 1987. The first winner was Jean-Baptiste Tati Loutard, for La Tradition du Songe (1985).[18]
Bibliography
- 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
References
- ^ "Okigbo, Christopher". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
- ^ "Biografski dodaci" [Biographic appendices]. Republika: Časopis Za Kulturu I Društvena Pitanja (Izbor Iz Novije Afričke Književnosti) (in Serbo-Croatian). XXXIV (12). Zagreb, SR Croatia: 1424–1427. December 1978.
- ^ Obi Nwakanma (1962). Christopher Okigbo / Thirsting for Sunlight. Suffolk: James Currey. p. 6.
- ISBN 0-8419-0016-7.
- ISBN 0-8419-0016-7.
- ^ "CNN.com - Veteran Nigerian economist Okigbo dies - September 14, 2000". edition.cnn.com. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
- ^ "C. Okigbo 1932–1967". www.christopher-okigbo.org. Christopher Okigbo Foundation. Archived from the original on 6 February 2010. Retrieved 6 July 2010.
- ^ Mbonu-Amadi, Osa (26 March 2019). "Nigeria: The Glorious Exit of Gabriel Imomotimi Okara (1921-2019)". allAfrica.com. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
- ^ "christopher okigbo international conference - program". www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
- .
- ^ "Christopher Okigbo". caucasreview.com. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
- ^ a b Nebeokike, Chibuike John (17 May 2020). "Biafra Heroes And Heroines Remembrance Day - Day Seventeen". Radio Biafra. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
- ^ "Okigbo, Christopher | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
- ^ "Biafra: Biafra Heroes And Heroines Remembrance Day Seventeen (17)". The Biafra Post. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
- ^ "European Modernism (EURO30003)".
- S2CID 191619330.
- ISBN 0-8419-0016-7. p. 71.
- ^ Omoyele, Idowu (7 May 2020). "Harry Garuba obituary". The Guardian.
Further reading
- Joseph C. Anafulu, "Christopher Okigbo, 1932-1967: A Bio-Bibliography," Research in African Literatures Vol. 9, No. 1 (Spring 1978), pp. 65-78.
- Sunday Anozie, Christopher Okigbo: Creative Rhetoric. London: Evan Brothers Ltd., and New York: Holmes and Meier, Inc., 1972.
- Uzoma Esonwanne, ed. 2000. Critical Essays on Christopher Okigbo. New York: G. K. Hall & Co.
- Ali Mazrui, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo. A Novel. London: Heinemann, 1971.
- Obi Nwakanma, Christopher Okigbo, 1930–67: Thirsting for Sunlight (Woodbridge: James Currey, 2010).
- Donatus Ibe Nwoga, Critical Perspectives on Christopher Okigbo, An Original 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 Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, 1998.
- Nyong J. Udoeyop, Three Nigerian Poets: A Critical Study of the Poetry of Soyinka, Clark, and Okigbo. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1973.
- James Wieland, The Ensphering Mind: History, Myth and Fictions in the Poetry of Allen Curnow, Nissim Ezekiel. A. D. Hope, A. M. Klein, Christopher Okigbo and Derek Walcott. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1988.
- Don't Let Him Die, an anthology of memorial poems in honour of Christopher Okigbo on the 10 anniversary of his death, edited by Chinua Achebe and Dubem Okafor. Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1978.
- See also for more details on Okigbo, Crossroads: an anthology of poems in honour of Christopher Okigbo on the 40th anniversary of his death, edited by Patrick Oguejiofor and Uduma Kalu (Lagos, Nigeria: Apex Books Limited, 2008).
- See also Bolaji S. Ramos, "The Battlefield Poet: Elegy for Christopher Okigbo", regarded as the first full-length performance poetry on Okigbo since his death in 1967. (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Battlefield-Poet-Christopher-Okigbo.../B0737HFSXD);(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0737HFSXD); The Sun Paper: www.sunnewsonline.com/lagos-lawyer-summons-the-ghost-of-chris-okigbo/
External links
- Christopher Okigbo Foundation website Archived 14 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine
- "Brecht’s and Okigbo’s work represent two different political approaches to modernism" - essay with approaches to Okigbo's work via intercessions into the work. Derrida and Foucault