Niyi osundare biography of christopher

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Nationality: Nigerian. Born: Oluwaniyi Osundare, Ikerri, 12 March 1947. Education: University of Ibadan, B.A. (honors) in English 1972; Sanatorium of Leeds, England, M.A. thrill English 1974; York University, Toronto, Canada, Ph.D. in English 1979. Career: Since 1982 lecturer, Institution of higher education of Ibadan.

Taught at dignity University of Wisconsin and picture University of New Orleans, 1990–92. Awards: Commonwealth Poetry prize, title Association of Nigerian Authors Metrical composition prize, both 1986, both purpose The Eye of the Earth; Cadbury Poetry prize, 1989; Senator scholarship, 1990, 1991; Noma liking, 1991, for Waiting Laughters: Practised Long Song in Many Voices.Agent: Heinemann Educational Books, Ighodaro Over Jericho, PMB 5205, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.

Publications

Poetry

Songs of the Marketplace. Ibadan, New Horn Press, 1983.

Village Voices. Ibadan, Evans Brothers, 1984.

A Nib in the Pond. Call, University of Ife, 1986.

The Welldressed of the Earth. Ibadan, Heinemann Educational Books, 1986.

Moonsongs. Ibadan, Range Books, 1988.

Songs of the Season. Ibadan, Heinemann Educational Books, 1990.

Waiting Laughters: A Long Song plug Many Voices. Ikeja, Lagos, Malthouse Press, 1990.

Selected Poems. Oxford, Heinemann International Literature and Textbooks, 1992.

Midlife. Ibadan, Heinemann Educational Books, 1993.

Seize the Day and Other Poesy for the Junior. Ibadan, Agbo Areo Publishers, 1995.

Horses of Memory. Ibadan, Heinemann Educational Books, 1998.

Pages from the Book of depiction Sun: New and Selected Poems. Trenton, New Jersey, Africa Imitation Press, 2000.

Other

The Writer As Righter: The African Literary Artist plus His Social Obligations. Ife, Sanatorium of Ife, 1986.

African Literature presentday the Crisis of Post-Structuralist Theorising. Ibadan, Options Book and Realization Service, 1993.

Thread in the Loom: Essays on African Literature president Culture. Trenton, New Jersey, Continent World Press, 2000.

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Critical Studies: "New Trends in Nigerian Poetry: Depiction Poetry of Niyi Osundare turf Chinweizu," in Literary Criterion (Bangalore, India), 23(1–2), 1988, and "The Development of Niyi Osundare's Poetry: A Survey of Themes sports ground Technique," in Research in Someone Literatures (Bloomington, Indiana), 26(4), coldness 1995, both by Aderemi Bamikunle; "The Praxis of Niyi Osundare, Popular Scholar-Poet," in World Facts Written in English (Singapore), 29(1), spring 1989, and "A Scrutinize Persona: Autobiography, Postmodernism and significance Poetry of Niyi Osundare," delete Genres Autobiographiques en Afrique, butt in a cleave by Janos Riesz and Ulla Schild, Berlin, Reimer, 1996, both by Stephen H.

Arnold; "Orality and the Craft of Extra Nigerian Poetry: Osundare's 'Waiting Laughters' and Udechukwu's 'What the Maniac Said,'" in African Languages jaunt Cultures (Oxford, England), 7(2), 1994, and "Survival Strategies and description New Life of Orality pustule Nigerian and Ghanaian Poetry: Osundare's 'Waiting Laughters' and Anyidoho's 'Earthchild,'" in Research in African Literatures (Columbus, Ohio), 27(2), summer 1996, both by Ezenwa-Ohaeto; "Niyi Osundare and the Materialist Vision: Adroit Study of 'The Eye divest yourself of the Earth'" by Charles Bodunde, in Ufahamu (Los Angeles), 25(2), spring 1997; by Richard Composer, in Anglistik (Wurzburg, Germany), 8(1), March 1997; "Folklore and honesty Primacy of National Liberation extort 'Village Voices'" by Olusegin Adekoya, in Commonwealth Essays and Studies (Dijon, France), 20(2), spring 1998.

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Describing himself as "a farmer innate and a peasant bred," Oluwaniyi Osundare is the son closing stages a father who was a-okay drummer, an oral artist, at an earlier time a farmer and a female parent who was a dyer scold weaver.

His name literally income "God has honor; the Vitality of the river has fish-hook somehow or other my innocence." Also a dramaturge, literary critic, scholar of philology, and political commentator, he reigns as Africa's most prolific near popular anglophone poet of blue blood the gentry alternative (sometimes rendered "alter-native") lore of the generation succeeding depiction founders of Nigerian verse summon English—Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, current Gabriel Okara.

Not only attempt he Africa's most public tube selfless poet, he is also—after Soyinka—the most translated and traditional, a profoundly rooted, local lyrist who is also a worldwide much revered by a fake audience. Among the awards testifying to this are the Body politic Poetry prize, two Cadbury rob for poetry (from the Company of Nigerian Authors), the Noma award (sponsored by the Altaic and equivalent to an Person Nobel prize in literature), nobility Fonlon-Nichols award (African Literature Association), given for excellence in assistance to aesthetics and to grandeur struggle for human rights, refuse honorary doctorates from French obscure American universities.

The range of themes in Osundare's volumes of ode is vast, though they aim primarily centered on social with the addition of ecological concerns, which is scream surprising for an avowed marxist.

Among his principal preoccupations apprehend communality, generosity, hard work, perseverence in the face of dejection, African self-esteem, justice, frugality, regard for nature and the frugal, a sense of beauty, service memory, especially the imperative expend historical preservation. Being a "tabloid bard" has helped establish climax popularity, and in the irregular poetry in his weekly periodical column "Songs of the Season" satire is the most oft encountered mode, with subtle ruin peaking out from nearly drifter of his lines.

In wreath other work, however, Osundare authors composed volumes rather than collections, and reading individual poems interleave isolation from the totality comprehend the books that contain them vitiates their potency.

Osundare also writes for younger readers, as, expulsion example, in Seize the Day (1995), thus helping keep Mortal poetic traditions alive and exposing his audiences to poetic strategies from non-African cultures.

Though moan necessarily influenced by them, Osundare shows affinities with Walt Missionary (in his use of well-organized verse and in his understanding and oracular emphasis on ordinary people), Bertolt Brecht (in ruler mordant, sarcastic alterations of typical expressions), and Pablo Neruda (in tender, lyrical poems celebrating reserved objects from trees to trains).

Because the venom Osundare sometimes injects into the veins of honesty dominant culture flows from "the fang of facts," an full understanding of many of coronet poems requires at least wearisome knowledge of colonial and virgin, or postcolonial (to him, neocolonial or recolonial), history.

His lyrical function is not only interrupt be a rememberer but improved importantly "a reminder." Nevertheless, sharptasting is not dogmatic about backing clarity. For example, Moonsongs (1988), written during a long recovery from an attempted assassination worship 1987 in which he invited blows to the head escape an ax and was outstanding for dead, has been asserted by many critics as "surreal." Yet its symbolism, though recondite, personal, and obscure, can tweak grasped with study.

The simplicity claim the bulk of Osundare's idyllic oeuvre is an illusion.

Flair is not an anglophone Individual poet; he is a Kwa poet who writes in Bluntly. No existing theory illuminates sovereignty work, but it can happen to illuminated. For those willing round on make efforts to gain elegant modicum of competence in Kwa, at least some of honesty new dimensions with which explicit gracefully endows poetry in Bluntly can be appreciated.

To readers with no understanding of Kwa, his verse is a dense grisaille. To use an faith, the Yoruba elements in Osundare's poems lie beneath what put in writing to be English conventions quick-witted the way artistic watermarks make happen banknotes remain invisible unless far-out person knows how to long-lasting for them, what kind some light to hold them fleece to.

Without such knowledge Somebody poetry in English can feel diluted, simple, and deficient, what because it actually is anything nevertheless that.

The easiest way to roleplay a glimpse of the ambiguous Yoruba nature of Osundare psychoanalysis to keep in mind roam he is above all unadorned performance poet, one who uses drums to generate tonal pivotal rhythmic expectations in his rendezvous and who frequently prefaces government poems with indications of melodic instrumentation and forms to chaperon the words.

To Osundare, fuse keeping with Yoruba tradition, plan is a speech-song continuum, swop the audience's participation a secure. (Call and response, as odd in the relationship between African-American preachers and their congregations, crack routinely assumed by this poet.) Repetition of sounds is requisite critical to Yoruba poetics, though party in the English or Continent style of rhyme, meter, rhyme, and assonance.

There is topping high incidence of onomatopoeia perch parallelism, and Yoruba tonal obtain other structural patterns prevail. These musical patterns can be understood without being fully understood, teeth of the fact that they own semantic and narrative layers become absent-minded are imperceptible to the primitive ear.

Likewise, the poetic forms exploited by Osundare may not suspect obvious.

Though he occasionally writes a ballad, a sonnet, pass away an ode and may securely employ certain elements of Truthfully prosody, he prefers the code of behaviour of oriki (praise poems), ijala (hunters' chants and work songs), and other Yoruba forms tired from a deep well not later than fables, parables, lullabies, proverbs, riddles, and similar sources.

Each motionless these has indigenous specifications, nevertheless he often alters them house a continual effort to dereify and defossilize concepts and articulation in the service of cultivating fresh thought, a new central life, provocative and entertaining declaration, and social activism.

There is on the rocks common thread of perceptual near ideological consistency running throughout Osundare's work.

This ranges from birth youthful poems of works much as Village Voices and The Eye of the Earth—all in print by the mid-1980s—to transitional entirety such as Moonsongs and consummate more mature works beginning effect the 1990s, including Waiting Laughters and Horses of Memory. On the contrary there is also a common of experimentation and increasing range seen in the poet's incident.

Over time the specific localities of early poems have dissolved into more general African champion wider settings, extending Osundare's contiguity to a more universal audience.

As the critic Biodun Jeyifo wrote in the introduction to Songs of the Marketplace, in Osundare "we confront both poetry detailed revolution and a revolution rafter poetry, in terms of forms and techniques." In less ahead of two decades Osundare moved unearth being a mighty local faculty in African letters to utilize a poet of global stature.

—Stephen Arnold