DANCE OF DEATH: NIGERIAN HISTORY AND CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO'S POETRY
DANCE OF DEATH: NIGERIAN HISTORY AND CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO'S POETRY
Author(s): Dubem Okafor
Edited By
Type: Book
Language: English
Content:: Non Academic
Source: African World Press
Timeline: African age - From 1960 (zama za Africa)
Published: 2019
Summary
Christopher Okigbo (1932-1967) was one of Africa's foremost poets whose life was cut short by the Biafran civil war. This book represents a definitive re-reading of Okigbo's poetry and a foregrounding of its importance as prophecy and warning to Nigerians (nay, Africans!) and to the misrulers of Nigeria against continued national misdirection. Locating the poet squarely within communalistic traditional African
Description
Christopher Okigbo (1932-1967) was one of Africa's foremost poets whose life was cut short by the Biafran civil war.
This book represents a definitive re-reading of Okigbo's poetry and a foregrounding of its importance as prophecy and warning to Nigerians (nay, Africans!) and to the misrulers of Nigeria against continued national misdirection. Locating the poet squarely within communalistic traditional African poetics, in which aesthetics and social functionality are coordinate components of art, the author discusses Okigbo as a poet of destiny, whose identification with the people -- the "quadrangle" of his geometric characterology -- was total.
The continuing cleavages and tension between the ethnic and the national have tended to foreclose the very possibility of ethnic-popular solidarity and nation-building in Nigeria. Okigbo's project included a sustained critical introspection, and his indignation, militancy, despair, and ultimate martyrdom do not constitute a pessimistic closure. His final prophecy of repetition represents a warning which, if heeded, is capable of breaking the cycle of national doom -- the "dance of death" -- and transforming the dream of nation into reality.
Related Content
Join The African Archives
The African Archives is a global network of researchers, archivists that is open to anyone with interest in documenting African's history. There are many ways to contribute to the archive: as an individual or as an institution looking to share its content online, as a professional archivist, as a history researcher, or as someone with a love for cultural heritage. You may join as a: