Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Nigeria Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
In The Voice he bent English into the shape of Ijaw syntax and made it carry a different way of thinking. He was ninety-seven when he died, and still the first modernist poet anglophone Africa produced.
Gabriel Okara was born at Bomoundi in the Niger Delta on 24 April 1921 and educated at Government College Umuahia and Yaba Higher College.
He is regarded as the first modernist poet of anglophone Africa. His 1964 novel The Voice is an experiment in writing English through Ijaw syntax and thought, and his poetry — The Fisherman's Invocation (1978) and The Dreamer, His Vision (2005) — draws throughout on African religion, folklore and imagery, earning him the description of the Nigerian Negritudist. He died at Yenagoa on 25 March 2019, aged ninety-seven.
He is regarded as the first modernist poet of anglophone Africa. His 1964 novel The Voice is an experiment in writing English through Ijaw syntax and thought, and his poetry — The Fisherman's Invocation (1978) and The Dreamer, His Vision (2005) — draws throughout on African religion, folklore and imagery, earning him the description of the Nigerian Negritudist. He died at Yenagoa on 25 March 2019, aged ninety-seven.
- Wikipedia — Gabriel Okara
- Brittle Paper — Gabriel Okara, whose modernist works changed African poetry, passes on at 97
- African Studies Centre Leiden — Gabriel Okara
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