The Words Finesse

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Gabriel Okara, one of Nigeria’s foremost poets and novelists, has died one month to his 98th birthday.

According to a family member who pleaded anonymity, Okara died at the Federal Medical Centre, Yenagoa, capital of Bayelsa state, on Sunday evening.

The Nigerian poet and novelist whose verse had been translated into several languages by the early 1960s, the source stressed was relaxing at his Yenagoa residence when he slumped around 4pm.

He added that the head of the Okara family has sent a text message out for an emergency meeting, and the family would issue a formal statement afterwards.

Meanwhile, the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Bayelsa State Chapter, in a statement by its chairman, Mrs Bina Ilagha, said the association was saddened by the news of the death.

“The Association is ruffled by the news because it came at a time when preparations are in top gear to celebrate his masterpiece, ‘’The Voice’’ at 55.

“We are saddened by the news but are consoled that he left behind lofty legacies. Pa Okara, through his literary exploits put Bayelsa in the map of literary excellence,” he said.

Seriake Dickson, Governor of the state, has described Okara’s death as a great loss to the state and Nigeria.

In a statement on Monday, Daniel Iworiso-Markson, Commissioner for Information and Orientation, said the Governor has declared a three-day mourning for Okara.

Iworiso-Markson said for the next three days, all flags will fly at half mast.

Similarly, the speech writer to the Governor of Bayelsa, and one time Chairman of ANA, Mr Michael Afenfia, in a statement in Yenagoa expressed sadness about the death.

“It is with great sadness that I received the news of the passing of the renowned poet and novelist, Gabriel Okara. Even in passing, I am sure your poem, “Piano and Drums”, will ‘minister’ to me in many ways.

“Your words are an inspiration! Your concerns about the African culture in the face of Western ‘threat’ as expressed in “Once Upon a Time” are ever before me.

“Thank you for leaving us with so much to remember of your time here with us. Thank you for setting the pace for several generations of writers,” he said.

Reacting to his death, Mr Uzoh Nwamara, the Chairman, Association of Nigerian Author (ANA), Rivers State, told Daily Sun, “It is with great shock that the ANA Rivers family received the news of the passage of our literary icon, Pa Gabriel Imomotimi Okara, today. He was with us at our last Literary Excellence Day held on October 14, 2017, in Port Harcourt as a recipient of our highest literary award that day.

“He was his usual calm and dignified self. I still remember when Chinua Achebe died in 2013, and I interviewed him jointly with our dear father and patron, Dr Elechi Amadi, on Garden City Radio, 89.9 FM. He lived a larger than life image through his works. Meeting him in person was like meeting Elechi Amadi in person. Their unassuming humility and palpable dignity will shock and humble you.

“He was a first class member of the first generation of modern African writers with numerous awards to show for it. This month of March has not been a good one for the Nigerian and African literary community. We have lost too many of our cherished own this month. We pray that the boatman ferries him across the river gently to the pantheon of literary gods for he was a complete literary gentleman.”

For the revolutionary critic, Doc Udenta O. Udenta, “Gabriel Okara’s The Voice is an iconic representation of postcolonial disillusionment. They were disappointed with the post colony, so they took to writing to protest. The novel is unique for its linguistic experimental, almost a direct transliteration of his native Ijaw language. I, also, remember, with nostalgia, of his poem, ‘Fisherman’s Invocation’ as a student.

“His death is a passage of literary, cultural icon. I am glad that his state government has tried to immortalise him while alive by naming a cultural centre in the state capital, Yenagoa. I hope others will do the same. He will be missed by all.”

Also, Soji Cole, the winner of the 2018 Nigeria Prize for Literature, was saddened by his demise. He said, “Okara’s The Voice remains one of my best early Nigerian novels. I cherish it. May your soul find peaceful repose, great one.”

Muhammadu Buhari, the Nigerian President has equally reacted to the death of the late iconic writer, Pa Okara, through a statement issued by his Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, today.

“The President extols the great story-teller whose powerful use of imagery and symbolism in his literary writings helped the world to appreciate and understand the richness, complexities and uniqueness of the African heritage and culture."

Born on April 24, 1921, late Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara is a lifelong Patron of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) and touted as the first modernist poet of anglophone Africa as well as an all-encompassing writer whose thoughts and works appear to be greatly influenced by his immediate environment. 

Born in Bumoundi in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, he was educated at Government College Umuahia, and later at Yaba Higher College. In 1945, he found work as a printer and bookbinder for colonial Nigeria’s government-owned publishing company, where he remained for nine years, during which he began to write.

At first, he translated poetry from Ijaw into English and wrote scripts for government radio. He studied journalism at Northwestern University in 1949, and before the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70), worked as Information Officer for the Eastern Nigerian Government Service.

Together with late Chinua Achebe, Okara was roving ambassador for Biafra’s cause in 1969. From 1972 to 1980, he was director of the Rivers State Publishing House in Port Harcourt.

His literary talent was spotted in 1953 when his poem, The Call of the River Nun, won an award at the Nigerian Festival of Arts. Some of his poetry was published in the literary magazine Black Orpheus. By 1960, he had won renown as an accomplished literary bard, with his poetry being translated into several languages. Piano and Drums is another popular poem of his featured in several anthologies.

His first novel, The Voice, was published in 1964. Besides his poetry and fiction, Okara has also written plays and features for broadcasting. Sadly, many of his unpublished manuscripts were destroyed during the Nigerian Civil War.

In 2005, his poetry volume, The Redeemer, His Vision, was joint winner of the highest literary prize in Nigeria, NLNG-sponsored the Nigeria Prize for Literature, with Ezenwa Ohaeto. Other awards he won in his lifetime included Commonwealth Poetry Prize, for The Fisherman’s Invocation (1979), and, in 2009, the Pan African Writers’ Association Honorary Membership Award.

The Words Finesse  (TWF) can't conclude this post without presenting you with two of late Pa Gabriel Okara's famous poems. Kindly enjoy as reflective pieces.

The Emma Press has called for submissions of poems about insects, for a children’s anthology to be edited by Fran Long and Dr. Isabel Galleymore. 

The anthology will be part of the publisher’s continuing series of themed anthologies of poetry for children. It accepts international entry, as long as such entrant have bought an Emma Press book or ebook.

Poets are invited to send in up to 3 poems, which should be suitable for readers aged 8+, and which will enthuse youngsters about the wonders of insects by either taking the readers on a journey of discovery to learn about insect anatomy, or inspire young readers about insect super powers. Or the ones  that could help children identify and classify insects.

The Emma Press accepts previously published poems as long as such entrant hold the rights to the poems and can license such to them. It also accepts translations, and translators can submit multiple proposals as long as they are one translation per author. The Emma Press offers each anthologised poet two complimentary copies of the book and a discount on future purchases of the book.

How to submit to Insect Poems

You must be a member of the Emma Press Club. Meaning you must have bought a book or ebook from the Emma Press website in this calendar year, since January 1, 2018, or already have been accepted into the club.

Place a maximum of three poems, each no longer than 65 lines, into a single Word/PDF/ODF document and only include text in the document and not images. Make sure your submission is anonymous. Also make sure you haven’t put your name or any biographical notes in the document and be aware that you will be asked to rename your document at a certain stage within the Google form.

Fill in the Google form HERE – it will tell you everything you need to know.

 The submissions will close on 5th of October, 2018.

Send all enquiries to hello@theemmapress.com. The team responds to every submissions. Hence, you will get an automatic receipt and a response once it receives your submission.

For more information on the call, visit HERE. 

Maya Angelou, who would have been 90 on 4 April, remains one of America’s most influential writers, artists and cultural figureheads.

Donald Hall, a prolific and award-winning poet and man of letters who was widely admired for his sharp humor and painful candor about nature, mortality, baseball and the distant past, has died at the age of 89, the Guardian reports. 

Hall’s daughter, Philippa Smith, confirmed on Sunday that her father died on Saturday at his home in Wilmot, New Hampshire , after being in hospice care for some time.

“He [was] really quite amazingly versatile,” said Hall’s friend Mike Pride, editor emeritus of the Concord Monitor newspaper and a retired administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, adding that Hall would occasionally speak to reporters at the Monitor about the importance of words.

Hall was US poet laureate in 2006 and 2007. Starting in the 1950s, he published more than 50 books, from poetry and drama to biography and memoirs, and edited a pair of influential anthologies. He was a baseball fan who wrote odes to his beloved Boston Red Sox, completed a book on pitcher Dock Ellis and contributed to Sports Illustrated. He wrote a prize-winning children’s book, Ox-Cart Man, and attempted a biography of Charles Laughton, only to have the actor’s widow, Elsa Lancaster, kill the project.

The greatest acclaim came for his poetry, for which honors included a National Book Critics Circle prize, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a National Medal of Arts. Although his style varied from haiku to blank verse, Hall returned repeatedly to a handful of themes: his childhood, the death of his parents and grandparents and the loss of his second wife and fellow poet, Jane Kenyon.

“Much of my poetry has been elegiac, even morbid, beginning with laments over New Hampshire farms and extending to the death of my wife,” he wrote in a memoir, Packing the Boxes, published in 2008.

He at times resembled a 19th-century rustic, with untrimmed beard and ragged hair. His work reached back to timeless images of his beloved home, Eagle Pond Farm, built in 1803 and belonging to his family since the 1860s. He kept country hours for much of his working life, rising at 6am and writing for two hours.

For Hall, the industrialized world often seemed an intrusion, such as a neon sign along a dirt road. In the tradition of TS Eliot and other modernists, he juxtaposed classical and historical references with contemporary slang and brand names. An opponent of the Vietnam war, he was ruthlessly self-critical. Nakedly, even abjectly, he recorded his failures and shortcomings and disappointments, whether his infidelities or his struggles with alcoholism.

The joy and tragedy of his life were his years with Kenyon, his second wife. They met in 1969, when she was his student at the University of Michigan. By the mid-70s they were married and living at Eagle Creek.

“We sleep, we make love, we plant a tree, we walk up and down/eating lunch,” he wrote.

But Kenyon was diagnosed with leukemia and died in 1995, when she was 47. Hall never stopped mourning her and arranged to be buried next to her, beneath a headstone inscribed with lines from one of her poems: “I BELIEVE IN THE MIRACLES OF ART, BUT WHAT PRODIGY WILL KEEP YOU BESIDE ME?”

In the 1998 collection Without, and in many poems after, Hall reflected on her dying days, on the shock of outliving a woman so many years younger, and the lasting bewilderment of their dog Gus, who years later was still looking for her.

Hall was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1928, but favored Eagle Pond over the “blocks of six-room houses” back home. By 14 he had decided to become a poet.

He published poetry while at Phillips Exeter Academy and formed lasting literary friendships at Harvard, including with fellow poets Robert Bly and Adrienne Rich and with George Plimpton, for whom he was the first poetry editor at the Paris Review. He met Daniel Ellsberg and would suspect well before others that the leaker of the Vietnam war documents known as the Pentagon Papers was his college friend.

Hall studied at Oxford and became one of the few Americans to win the Newdigate Prize, an honor given to Oscar Wilde, John Ruskin and others. He returned to the US in the mid-1950s and taught at schools including Stanford and Bennington. He was married to Kirby Thompson from 1952 to 1969, and they had two children.

Hall’s first literary hero was Edgar Allan Poe and death was an early subject. In recent years, as Hall entered the “planet of antiquity”, many of his elegies were for himself.

A court in the self-declared republic of Somaliland has sentenced a young poet, Nacima Qorane to three years in jail for her poetry for the unification of Somali, BBC reports.

She was found guilty of bringing the state into contempt by advocating for Somaliland to reunite with Somalia.

Pressure groups in Somaliland have launched into campaigns to point out that her basic human rights have been violated.

Somaliland self-declared independence in 1991, but is not till present recognized internationally. 

Ms Qorane was arrested in January after returning from the Somali capital Mogadishu, where prosecutors said she had recited poetry calling for Somali unity.

The prosecution said that she had labelled the self-declared republic of Somaliland a "region" and "insulted and defamed" its government.

Somaliland's Human Rights Centre has asked the government of Somaliland to release Nacima Qorane and respect human rights.

Its director, Guleid Ahmed Jama, told the BBC that it was "very concerned about the conviction and sentencing of Nacima Qorane".

"Freedom of expression is enshrined and protected by the constitution of Somaliland. We urge the government of Somaliland to respect its own constitution," he said.

We gathered that some other artists and journalists have been arrested in Somaliland for the same offence.

I wish for a Nigeria free of impediments- Umar Saidu Umar

Umar Saidu Isa fondly called The Dynamic Galvanizer is a poet, writer, blogger, voice-over artiste, rapper and a motivational speaker. He is also the CEO of Etsumar Poetry, an audio production and graphics presentation outfit. In this interview with ABDULHAFEEZ T. OYEWOLE, he speaks about his works and passion for a better Nigeria.

My books are for every living soul that can read and tackle the menace of drug abuse in our society- Saliu Ahmad Toyin

Saliu Ahmad Toyin, popularly known as ThePenWarLord is a Kwara based poet and spoken word artiste with two books: The Eye Opener and Extract from the Hourglass. In this Interview with ABDULHAFEEZ T. OYEWOLE, he attributed his ability to discharge his family, writing and tutoring duties to self-motivation, while expecting to fulfill his family members’ biggest desires to impact in the lives of young writers and be happy with himself. He also spoke about his book on drug abuse and his poetry collection which is for every readable living soul. Here is the conversation.