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Sentinel Poetry (Online) #57 ISSN 1479-425X |
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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POETRY & GRAPHICS...since December 2002 |
CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
An International Multidisciplinary Celebration of Okigbo’s Legacy
Theme: Postcolonial African Literature
and the Ideals of the Open Society/Teaching
and Learning from Christopher Okigbo’s Poetry
September 19-23, 2007
PROGRAM
Convener: Chukwuma Azuonye (chukwuma.azuonye@umb.edu/ azuonye@fas.harvard.edu)
INTRODUCTION
THE ROBBERS are back in black hidden steps of detonators—
FOR BEYOND the blaze of sirened afternoons, beyond
the motorcades;
Beyond the voices and days, the echoing highways; beyond
the latescence
Of our dissonant airs; through the curtained eyeballs,
Onto our forgotten selves, onto our broken images;
beyond the barricades
Commandments and edicts, beyond the iron tables,
beyond the elephant’s
Legendary patience, beyond the inviolable bronze
bust; beyond our crumbling towers —
BEYOND the iron path careering along the same beaten track —
THE GLIMPSE of a dream lies smoldering in a cave,
together with the mortally wounded birds.
—Christopher Okigbo, “Elegy for Alto” (Path of Thunder)
IT is perhaps not too much to say that Christopher Nixton Ifekandu Okigbo (1930-67) was by far the greatest postcolonial, modernist, African poet of the twentieth-century. Born on August 16, 1930 to a prominent Igbo Roman Catholic family in Ojooto, in present day Anambra State of Nigeria, and educated at the Government College Umuahia and later at the University College Ibadan where he majored in Greek and Latin Classics, he began writing poetry seriously in the late 1950’s after a period of intense exercises in translating poetry from Latin to English and vice versa. Within the ten-year period between the composition, in 1957, of his earliest published poem, “Song of the Forest,” and his death in August 1967 while fighting as a field-commissioned Major on the Biafran side of the Nigeria-Biafra war, he established himself as a commanding force, not only in modern African poetics, but in world literature at large. Today, he is widely recognized as one of the exemplars par excellence of global or transnational modernism.
Okigbo’s claim to greatness rests on five main factors, namely: his all-inclusive multicultural sensibility; his mythopoeic imagination; his infusion of ritual seriousness into the praxis of his poetry; his masterly fusion of a wide diversity of poetic modes from traditions across the world; and, above all, his all-encompassing vision of reality—the phenomenal and the imaginative—in the fortunes of his poet-hero, the Prodigal, through whose “burden” and “journey” of “several centuries” he has constructed a complex “fable of man’s perennial quest for fulfillment,” in cycles of poems which, “though written and published separately are organically related.”
Running through, and unifying, all these dimensions of his poetry is his overriding concern with the ideals of the open society—decolonization of the mind, cultural freedom, human rights and civil liberties, security of life and property guaranteed by the rule of law—ideals which are clearly manifest in his consistent recreations of, and references to, “the events of the day” (the traumas of social change, crises of identity, political crises, failure of leadership, violence, and other social upheavals) culminating in the direct, active involvement in the Biafran war which cost him his life in August 1967.
The 1970s and 80s saw a remarkable efflorescence of critical attention to, and imitative adulation, by younger writers, of Okigbo’s poetry—a few proclaiming it iabstract, opaque and even irrelevant, a few others not quite sure what to make of it, while the great majority lavished praises on his achievement, at times almost to the point of bardolatory. It is indeed an index of the high and excellent seriousness of Okigbo’s poetry that resonances of his seminal influences on the generation of African poets immediately after him have continued to be felt till today, as can be witnessed from Don’t Let Him Die: An Anthology of Memorial Poems for Christopher Okigbo, edited by Chinua Achebe and Dubem Okafor (1978) and the most recent collection of poems celebrating his legacy, Crossroads (An Anthology of 115 Nigerian Poets in Honor of Christopher Okigbo, on the 40th Anniversary of His death and on His 75th Birthday Anniversary), edited by Patrick Tagbo Oguejiofor and Uduma Kalu, with a Foreword by Isidore Okpewho (in press, 2007)..
Further acknowledgement of the greatness of Okigbo’s poetry can be found, in addition to several doctoral and masters dissertations or theses, in such works devoted to his life, career or poetry, as the novel, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo (Ali Mazrui, 1971); the critical studies, Creative Rhetoric: Christopher Okigbo (Sunday Anozie, 1972), Christopher Okigbo: The Poet of Destiny (Emmanuel Obiechina, 1980), Nationalism in Okigbo’s Poetry (Dubem Okafor, 1980); and Dance of Death: Nigerian History and Christopher Okigbo’s Poetry (Dubem Okafor, 1998); the collections of essays, Critical Perspectives on the Poetry of Christopher Okigbo (ed. Donatus Nwoga, 1983) and Critical Essays on Christopher Okigbo (ed. Uzoma Esonwanne, 2000); and the critical editions of his poetry, Christopher Okigbo: Collected Poems (ed. Adewale Maja-Pearce, 1978) and most recently, Christopher Okigbo: Complete Poetry (including his previously unpublished works, edited with critical notes by Chukwuma Azuonye, in press, 2007).
Okigbo is one of the focal interests in such works, as the following, devoted to selected avant-garde twentieth century African poets: Three Nigerian Poets: A Critical Study of the Poetry of Soyinka, Clark, and Okigbo (Nyong J. Udoeyop, 1973); Four Modern West African Poets (Romanus Egudu, 1978); Understanding African Poetry: A Study of Ten Poets (K. L. Goodwin, 1982); 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 (James Wieland, 1988); and Creative Mythology in Nigerian Poetry: Ojaide, Okigbo and Osundare (Emma Ngumoha, 1998).
In other works, at least a chapter is devoted to Okigbo’s life and works. For example: The Chosen Tongue: English Writing in the Tropical World (Gerald Moore. 1969); Whispers From a Continent (Wilfred Cartey, 1969); The Example of Shakespeare (John Pepper Bekederemo-Clark, 1970); Introduction to Nigerian Literature (Paul Theroux, in Bruce King, ed., 1971); Reader’s Guide to African Literature ((Hans Zell and Helene Silver, eds., 1972); The Critical Evaluation of African Literature, (Dan Izevbaye, in Edgar Wright, ed., 1973); The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture and Literature id Africa South of the Sahara (Awoonor, Kofi, 1975); When the Drum Beat (Bernth Lindfors, 1979); Nigerian Literature: A Bibliography of Criticism,1952-1976 (Claudia Baldwin,. 1980); World Authors 1970-1975 (ed. by John Wakeman, 1980); A Sense of Place (Robert Fraser, in Olinder, Britta, ed., 1984); Ngambika: Studies in the New Literatures in English (Elaine Fido Savory, in Carol Boyce Davies and Anne Adams Graves, ed., 1986); Black Orpheus, Transition, and Modern Cultural Awakening in Africa (Peter Benson, 1986); West African Poetry: A Critical History (Robert Fraser. 1986); Language and Theme in African Literature (Emmanuel Obiechina, 1990); The Gong and the Flute: African Literary Development and Celebration (Chukwuma Azuonye, in Kalu Ogbaa, ed., 1994); Postcolonial African Writers (ed. by Pushpa Naidu Parekh and Siga Fatima Jagne, 1998); Aestheticism and Modernism: Debating Twentieth-Century Literature 1900-1960 (David Richards, in Richard Danson Brown and Suman Gupta, ed., 2005), and The Responsible Critic: Essays on African Literature in Honor of Professor Ben Obumselu (Ben Obumselu, "Christopher Okigbo: A Poet's Identity," in: Isidore Diala, ed., Africa World Press, 2006).
In 2001, a major online resource for the study of the poems, Concordance to Okigbo’s Poetry, was created by Michael J. C. Echeruo (http://echeruo.syr.edu/biodata). Other online sources—keyword “Christopher Okigbo”—list several thousand references. Additionally, a major critical biography. Thirsting for Sunlight, by Obi Nwakamma is in the offing. Most recently (2006-2007), as part of the preparation for the present celebration of Okigbo’s legacy, a critical study of the organic unity of the poems, The Quest for Fulfillment: Narrative and Dramatic Continuity in Okigbo’s Poetry, and a study of his previously unpublished works (Christopher Okigbo at Work), have been completed by convener. Hopefully other recently completed works or those in progress will be unveiled at the events of September 19-23.
Associated with recent developments in Okigbo scholarship is the nomination by the Christopher Okigbo Foundation (spearheaded by the founder, Obiageli Okigbo), and acceptance by UNESCO in the Memory of the World Register, of the unpublished previously papers, including new poems (among them a remarkable handful of poems written in Igbo and drafts of an unfinished “Anthem for Biafra”). The Okigbo papers were the very first papers from Africa to be accepted in this important international register of documents of exceptional significance worthy of preservation as monuments of the unageing intellect of humanity. A special session focusing on these papers has been worked into the present program (evening, Friday, September 21).
The Theme of the Present Celebration:
Postcolonial African Literature & the Ideals of the Open Society/
Teaching & Learning from Christopher Okigbo’s Life and Works
The organizing principle of the present celebration of Okigbo’s legacy is the age-old wisdom that literature is a powerful, socially transformative force. Okigbo’s poetry epitomizes this principle. Existing and current scholarship, exemplified by the papers to be presented as keynote addresses and in various conference panels, reveal that his poetry is not only a mirror of the socio-cultural and historical realities of his time but a complex of prophetic visions rooted in these realities.
The theme of the conference is particularly appropriate from the point of view of socio-political developments in Africa at a time of rapid growth of global culture and consciousness. Traumatized by colonialism and destabilizing neo-colonial relations with the more powerful nations of the world, the postcolonial nations of Africa are passing through a transitional phase of intense struggle. There is a deeply felt need to rediscover the values and ideals of the open society, which have been sadly obscured by colonialism, as well as the post-independence entrenchment of military, one-party dictatorships, and sham democracies without democrats, in places in neo-colonial states such as Nigeria. For the most part, in contemporary African states, neglect of the rule of law, contempt for human rights, endemic political crises; senseless and wasteful wars; ethnic cleansing, and other recurrent cycles of tragic loss of human life, have become the order of the day. Attempts to resolve these destabilizing developments and the disillusionment that has come in their wake, have often sidetracked creative solutions of the kind which are writ large in the structures of the imagination of great African writers such as Okigbo.
Over the past four decades, active scholarly discourse on Okigbo’s poetry, has tended to focus on its aesthetic and mythological dimensions almost to the exclusion of the multiplex subtexts covering the entire spectrum of the humane values of the open society which the poems clearly embody. Against this background, Okigbo’s poetry raises two interrelated questions, both of which are embodied in the central theme of the present celebration. First, to what extent are the ideals of an open society—that is, a free, democratic, just, lawful, and purposive society—expressed in Okigbo’s oeuvre? Second, how can these ideals be learned and taught through close reading of Okigbo’s poetry, both inside and outside the classroom? Taken together, these questions move us beyond the strict purview of “high modernism,” “aesthetics,” and “form,” to consider poetry’s social implications and positive impact on the march of civilization..
These concerns seem to have been telescoped in the very last but telling socio-political statement contained in the poet’s swan song, “Elegy to Alto” (quoted above) the final segment of Okigbo’s last published sequence of poems, Path of Thunder. Within the framework of a poignantly accurate prophecy of the degeneration of postcolonial African governance into organized armed robbery (wherein “the robbers are backing black hidden steps of detonators”), Okigbo calls on us to critically reexamine our inner selves with a view to moving “beyond” numerous impediments to the attainment of the ideals of free, open and confident society, among them, the reckless and annoying pomp and pageantry of the post-independence elite as manifested in endless processions of their expensive cars; the malaise of “highways” filled with echoes or impassioned but confusing noises which are no more than a daily parrot-repetition of the deceptive cant of the political leadership; the innumerable causes of disunity (“our dissonant airs”) which call for a binding force; our collective blindness (“curtained eyeballs”) and consequent ability to securitize or to engage in bold face-to-face negotiations on matters affecting our collective destiny; a blinded populace whose “shuttered sleep” conjures an unflattering image of Africa as a sleeping giant; our collective mental numbness, manifested in cultural amnesia or forgetfulness of who we are as a people; the destruction of our traditional cultural icons; and the numerous barricades already flourishing in our national life and impeding progress, complicated and further reinforced by the authoritarian and unquestionable orders of the godlike military or dictatorial civilian rulers of the day. In the end, this horrendous vision crescendoes into the image of an alienated and traumatized nation of people with “forgotten selves,” whose fruitless effort at nation-building is aptly recaptured in hyperbole of “crumbling towers” and of “the iron dream careering along the same beaten track,” in a repeating cycle of meaningless Sisyphian labors.
Objectives of the Present Celebration
In exploring the challenges of fostering the ideals of the open society, through the teaching and study of the life and works of Christopher Okigbo, the present literary and artistic celebration is designed to pay particular attention to seven main objectives.
The first is to reawaken active interest within the global scholarly community in the study and teaching of Okigbo’s poetry. The last decade has witnessed a remarkable and unfortunate decline, not only of research and publications in scholarly journals on the poetry of Christopher Okigbo but a sharp decline in its representation in academic curricula and course syllabi at all levels of the educational system. Consequently, collections of Okigbo’s works (Labyrinths and the Collected Poems) have gone out of print and there has been a notable decline in the representation of his poetry in new anthologies of African writing. It is with a view to remedying this situation that the conference has been designed to pay close attention to the value and challenges of teaching and learning from Okigbo’s poetry. In this exercise, it is hoped that the reprint of Labyrinths (contracted by Obiageli Okigbo) and the publication of the annotated critical edition of Christopher Okigbo: Complete Poetry (including the previously unpublished works) will play a central role.
Beyond the artistic virtuosity of the works, attention will be paid to the issues of global culture and consciousness, multiculturalism, perennial philosophy, cultural sycreticism, cultural freedom, decolonization of the mind, and, above all, the humane values of an open society, which the works clearly embody, as outlined above.
Further to the foregoing, an attempt will be made to breakdown the ivory tower insularism that has barricaded not only the outside world but even lower levels of the educational system, from the benefits of teaching and learning from Okigbo poetry. It is therefore hoped to explore the prospects and challenges of extending the values of teaching and learning from the poetry of Christopher Okigbo to primary and secondary schools, through appropriate junior level readers, anthologies and related tools, and to the general public, through the full exploitation of the enabling twenty-first century technologies of audiovisual or multimedia representation, the Internet and other dimensions of cyberspace. In this respect, the curriculum diversity and enrichment workshops for high school teachers, associated with the present and future conferences, are expected tp play a decisive role.
It is hoped that this conference will attempt to set an agenda for future studies and pedagogy. To this end, the conference will revisit and attempt to resolve old controversies with a view to putting paid to contradictory readings of the poems and opening the door to a fresh understanding of the mythos and praxis of the works. Close attention will be paid to available new tools of scholarship and research. With the courtesy of the Christopher Okigbo Foundation, the conference will have the opportunity to examine, both in print (in the pages of the present conference catalog) and through special PowerPoint presentations by the convener and Okigbo’s daughter, Obiageli Okigbo (in the evening of Friday, September 21), previously unpublished and recently discovered writings and to place them in their proper perspective vis-à-vis the existing and well-known corpora.
Furthermore, it is hoped that the conference will conclude with a comprehensive vision, mission statement, and agenda for the future of research in, and the teaching of, the poetry of Christopher Okigbo.
Finally, the conference will, in its closing business session (Sunday morning, September 23, 2007), discuss ways and means of supporting and propagating the goals of the newly-established Christopher Okigbo Foundation, organized by Christopher Okigbo’s daughter, Obiageli Okigbo. This business session will consider, among other agenda, the rules of the Christopher Okigbo Society, an annual or biannual Christopher Okigbo Conference, a quarterly, semi-annual or annual Christopher Okigbo Newsletter, and support for the website of the Christopher Okigbo Foundation.
Bio-Critical Roundtables
Among the special scheduled highlights of the conference are bio-critical roundtables (of free discussions, presentations, homilies, reminiscences, personal appearances, and questions and answers) featuring four key “connections” in Christopher Okigbo’s personal experience of life and letters:
(1) The Years of Childhood, School Days & Family Life (featuring Obi Nwakamma, Okigbo’s biographer; Iyom Victoria Okuzu, his younger sister; Chinua Achebe and Chike Momah, his high school mates at Umuahia Government College; Bede Okigbo, his cousin and childhood buddy, and Alex Ekwueme, his childhood/boyhood friend); Members of Christopher Okigbo’s immediate nuclear family—his wife, Ambassador Sefi Judith Attah, and daughter, Annabelle Obiageli Okigbo— well-known to readers of his poetry through the dedication to “Safinat and Ibrahimat” in Labyrinths (1971)—will be in attendance and will speak in this forum. For the first time, the international community of Okigbo scholars and literary friends, will hear the voices and intimate reminiscences of these two women, closest to Christopher Okigbo’s heart. The forum will be chaired by Chike Momah.
(2) The Great Mbari Renaissance of the Late 1950’s & Early 1960’s (featuring the poet’s literary friends and colleges at Fiditi, Nsukka, and Ibadan, in the heyday of the Mbsri Writers and Artists Club, during which he published his first book of poetry, Heavensgate, made his dramatic entry into the African literary scene through his participation in the Mbari Conference of African Writers at Kampala, Uganda; and became the West African Editor of Transition as well as the West African Representative of Cambridge University Press at Ibadan. Among the speakers expected at this forum are Wole Soyinka, Michael Echeruo,Demas Nwoko, Gerald Moore O. R. Dathorne, Ben Obumselu, and Abiola Irele (as Chair)
(3) Old Controversies & New Perspectives (featuring Ali Mazrui, Chinweizu, Ihechukwu Madubuike and Onwuchekwa Jemie, looking back into the future of Okigbo scholarship in the light old controversies initiated by them over the alleged obscurity and abstractness of Okigbo’s art, his pandering to Euromodernism at the expense of his own African indigenous aesthetic standards, and his alleged prodigal sacrifice of his life in pursuit of a narrow sectional cause). The forum, holding at Harvard University, will be chaired by Jacob Oluponn (Professor and Chair, African Studies Committee, Harvard University)..
(4) The Post-Independence Crises of the 1960’s & The Biafran War (reminiscences of Okigbo’s intellectual and active involvement in the crises and war in which he lost his life with candid reflections on the extent to which Okigbo’s death in action can be construed as Matryrdom or prodigal waste of life, featuring Ben Gbulie (who fought with Okigbo at the Nsukka war front), Okeleke Nzeogwu, Emma Okocha, Cyril Enweonwu, Onwuchekwa Jemie, Robert Fraser, and Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe (who will chair the forum).
Keynote Addresses
The conference will feature eight outstanding keynote speakers, some of them Okigbo’s close personal friends while others are artists of the younger generation influenced by him or distinguished scholars of Okigbo’s transnational modernism..
The intimate tone of the keynote addresses will be set on the first day of the conference (Thirsday, September 20, 2007) by the personal reminiscences of two close-friends of the poet, Michael J. C. Echeruo, First generation, postcolonial Anglophone Poet (author of Mortality, 1968, and Distanced, 1971), Critic, Scholar, Distingusished University Administrator, currently William Safire of Modern Letters, Syracuse, and Ben Obumselu, Emeritus Professor of English, African and Comparative Literature, Abia State University, Nigeria, Okigbo’s close friend, routinely acknowledged in the early versions of Okigbo’s poems “for criticism which led to improvement in phrase and structure.” In “Five Poems for Okigbo and Some Reminiscing,” Echeruo re-memories several crossings of the path between him and Okigbo in the early 1960’s, about the time Okigbo burst into the limelight as a leading bard of his time, while in “Cambridge House, Ibadan, 1965-66,” Obumselu remembers Okigbo’s last two years at Ibadan amid the “splintered flames” of Nigeria reeling from bloody crises to shooting war.
On the second day (Friday, September 21, 2007), Chinua Achebe, world-acclaimed novelist, poet and essayist; currently Stevenson Professor of Languages and Literature, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and Wole Soyinka, versatile avant-garde playwright, poet, social activist; and 1986 Nobel Laureate, will reflect on Okigbo’s profound assimilation of wide-ranging influences from, and impact on, his time as well as his radical transformation from a visionary and committed artist to a warrior-poet in their bio-critical keynote addresses: “Christopher Okigbo and his Time” (Achebe) and “Soldiering On: Arms and the Poet” (Soyinka)
The conference will close (on Saturday, September 22) with two pairs of contrasting keynotes, the first by Ali Mazrui, Author The Trial of Christopher Okigbo (1971); Professor and Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University, New York and Chiamanda Adichie, Young woman novelist; author of Purple Hibiscus and Half of A Yellow Sun, and winner of the 2007 UK Orange Prize for Women writers. By contrast to his novel, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo, in which Okigbo is arraigned before the court of After-Africa and charged with ptodigally wasting his artistic talents in a narrow sectional cause, Mazrui’s keynote, “The Muse and the Matryr in the African Experience: Christopher Okigbo in Comparative Perspective,” reconfigures the poet as a martyr for the ideals of the open society, while in her address to the high school teachers (Okigbo, Memories of Biafra and the Composition of Half of the Yellow Sun), Adichie reflects on the challenges of writing (often under the shadow of Okigbo’s influence) about the traumatic effects of the Biafran war she experienced through the re-memories of older friends and family, in her bestselling and UK Orange Prize-winning second novel, Half of the Yellow Sun (2006)..
The second pair of keynotes on the closing day of the conference are reflections on Okigbo as one of the finest exemplars of 20th century globalist or transnational modernism. by Jahan Ramazani, Professor and Chair of English, University of Virginia and Poetry Editor, Nortnn Anthologies (in "Christopher Okigbo's Transnational Poetics: Modernism, Postcolonialism, and Globalization"), and by David Richards, Professor and Chair of English, University of Stirling, Scotland, author of the Chapter on Okigbo in Aestheticism and Modernism: Debating Twentieth-Century Literature (2005), in ”The Art Behind’: Okigbo’s Archaic Modern."
Closely related to the keynotes are three special lectures or presentations—a lecture at Boston University in the evening of Friday, September 21, “Ọdịnaana na Ịchọmma [Tradition and the Search for Beauty]: Art and Okigbo’s Poetry,” by Obiora Udechukwu, Poet, Artist, Dana Distinguished Professor and Chair, Department of Art, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY 12504, USA, preceded on the same day, at Harvard, by two PowerPoint presentations focusing on Okigbo’s previously unpublished papers—“Christopher Okigbo at Work: A Survey of His Previously Unpublished Papers,” by Chukwuma Azuonye, Professor of African Literature, University of Massachusetts, Boston and “Nominating the Unpublished Papers of Christopher Okigbo for the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.”by Obiageli Okigbo, Okigbo’s Daughter, President and Founder, Christopher Okigbo Foundation, Brussels, Belgium.
Conference Panels and Papers
The conference is planned around invited or received papers from leading and upcoming Okigbo scholars, all of which will be presented in plenary sessions, each lasting about 1 hour and thirty minutes. Each paper will explores one aspect or another of the conference theme with reference to Okigbo’s poetry sequences—Four Canzones, Heavensgate, Siren Limits, Fragments out of the Deluge, Laments of the Silent Sisters, Lament of the Drums, Distances, Lament of the Masks, Dance of the Painted Maidens, Path of Thunder, or the previously unpublished poems, edited by the convener, Chukwuma Azuonye, samples of which are presented in the present program. Most of the papers focus on the poet’s representation of the ideals of the open society in one or more specific sequences. Alternative topics exploited in other papers include the global contexts and influences on Okigbo's work, intimacy and freedoms of expression, interracial and intercultural exchange, syncretistic ritual, the enigma of cultural origins, modernism, postcolonialism, globalism and globalization, as represented in his poetry and life as a whole. In general contributors have included a brief summary of the state of Okigbo criticism and a critical examination of the challenges of teaching and learning from the poetry, as they pertain to the topic examined.
Curriculum Diversity Workshop for High School Teachers
Associated with the present and future conferences in this series is a series of workshops for US high school teachers aimed at creating incentives for teachers at the lower echelons of the educational system to adopt African literature texts in their literature, language arts and social studies classes. In collaboration with school authorities, beginning with the Boston School Board (in the present 2007-2008 cycle), it is hoped to use these workshops to create a program of systematic diversification of the school curricula in response to globalization and global cultural trends and in recognition of the fact that one of the factors militating against minority high achievement in the US educational system is the feeling, especially among blacks in high schools who are preparing for college, that their African roots and heritage are not equitably represented in school curricula, including inner city schools where they constitute a demographic majority. Looking into the mirror of the educational system, they fail to see their own faces. Our hope is that through constant exposure to African authors and texts at our annual conferences and teachers’ workshops, this situation will be steadily and systematically ameliorated.
Our conference series thus has two distinct but closely interwoven components—the scholarly dialogue among scholars and between them and K-12 teachers in the Fall, followed by a workshop for the teachers in the summer of the following year focusing on teaching and learning from selected African texts and systems of thought, beginning with Summer 2008. At the annual conferences, such as the present Okigbo conference, leading scholars in the field of African literature will examine theoretical and pedagogic issues pertaining to carefully selected African texts, authors or themes from the point of view of the challenges which they pose to non-African teachers and learners. To this end we ahave invited teachers from the greater Boston area to attend the present conference in preparation for the first high school teachers’ workshop planned for Summer, 2008. Supported by art exhibitions, films, musical events and dramatic performances, these associated teaching workshops will seek to diversify the high school curriculum by introducing a range of important African writers: members of and earlier generation that includes Nigerians such as Chinua Achebe (Novelist, Poet and Essayist), Christopher Okigbo (Poet), Wole Soyinka (Playwright, Poet, Novelist and Nobel Laureate), and Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Novelist and Playwright) as well as the new, rising generation of writers represented in the present event by Chimamanda Adichie (Novelist). Through an intensive study of literary works and their socio-cultural settings, (under the theme, Thematic Focus: “African Voices, Primary Sources”), it is hoped that teachers selected from high schools across the country will diversify their literature and social studies curricula. It is also hoped that, in time, such a program of curricular diversification will broaden the cultural base of various schools, and create incentives for deeper engagement, and love of learning, among culturally alienated minority students.
Proposed authors and texts for the first workshop in 2008 include Christopher Okigbo’s Labyrinths or Complete Poetry; Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (widely available under several imprints); and Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (widely available from the original publisher). Best known for her work Purple Hibiscus, young woman novelist Chimamanda Adichie, will speak at the opening ceremony of the conference on Saturday, September 22, 2007 alongside Ali Mazrui, and invitations have been issued to teachers in high schools in Massachusetts to attend this event. Her address will followed by book-signing during the coffee break.
The first teaching workshop (a detailed program of which will be available later in 2007) will no doubt be useful as models for future workshops in Africa and elsewhere, aimed at introducing a wider coterie of African writers and their works into secondary and even middle- and elementary- school curricula.
Exhibition of Contemporary Nigerian Art Inspired by Okigbo
An exhibition of contemporary Nigerian art (organized by Cynthia Becker, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, Boston University, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 302, Boston, MA 02215, 617-353-1471 (phone), 617-353-3243, cjbecker@bu.edu) will be held from September 11 through October 19, 2007, in the George Sherman Union Gallery at Boston University. Two participating artists (Uche Okeke and Obiora Udechukwu) consider Okigbo’s life and poetry in their work, under two intersecting themes:
· Another Modernity: Works on Paper by Uche Okeke
· Nigerian Poetics: Works by Obiora Udechukwu
Funded by the Boston University Humanities Foundation and hosted by the Department of Art History in collaboration with the university’s College of Fine Arts (CFA), the program will conclude with a lecture, “Ọdịnaana na Ịchọmma [Tradition and the Search for Beauty]: Art and Okigbo’s Poetry,” at the CFA Concert Hall, Boston University, Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, by Obiora Udechukwu, Poet, Artist, Dana Distinguished Professor and Chair, Department of Art, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York.
“Hurrah for Thunder!”
A Program of Poetry Reading, Music and Songs in Honor of Okigbo
In 1978, Chinua Achebe and Dubem Okafor published a collection of memorial poems for Christopher Okigbo entitled, Don’t Let Him Die. In this volume, as characterized by keynote speaker, Ben Obumselu, “poets, painters, soldiers, professors, and various contemporaries offer their tributes of undying affection.” The celebration of Okigbo’s legacy at the 2007 is planned to include a reenactment on a larger scale of a similar poetic celebration in the evening of the first day of the conference at the University of Massachusetts, Boston (Thursday evening, September 20, 2007, from 8:00 pm). Sponsored by the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Its Social Consequnecs and facilitated by the Director, Kevin Bowen, the program will be staged under the theme, “Hurrah for Thunder” (as a re-enactment of a similar event held at the Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, on June 20, 2007, under the auspices of the Christopher Okigbo Foundation). Participants will be enabled to hear leading African poets, representing the older and younger postcolonial generations, reading their poems and engaging in interactive talk-back with the audience. Among those expected at the reading, coordinated by Esiaba Irobi, are Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Gabriel Okara, John Pepper Clark, Dennis Brutus, Michael J. C. Echeruo, Niyi Osundare, Dennis Brutus, Tanure Ojaide, Esiaba Irobi, Ifeanyi Menkiti, Ihechukwym Madubuike, Obiora Udechukwu, Ifi Amadiume, Chukwuma Azuonye, Chimalum Nwankwo, Syl Cheney-Coker, Obiageli Okigbo, Chinyere Okafor, Obi Nwakamma, Dubem Okafor, Steven Vincent, Ije Okigbo, Ijeoma Azuonye, and Olu Oguibe, among other past winners of the Christopher Okigbo Poetry Prize as well as selected members of the Christopher Okigbo Society from Nigeria, and of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). The program will also include readings from the new anthology of memorial poems for Okigbo, Crossroads, edited by Patrick Tagbo Oguejiofor and Uduma Kalu. Above all, it will include songs and music inspired by, or related Okigbo’s oeuvre, as described below.
Songs and Musical Performances
In one of his Interviews with Lewis Nkosi (1965), Okigbo, who taught himself the saxophone and piano and loved performing jazz on the saxophone, reminds us of the musical roots of his artistic inspiration and career.
Wole (Soyinka) made his first public appearance as a singer, I accompanied him at the piano….I was writing music seriously up to 1956. I started writing poetry when I stopped writing music.
And on the composition of his first poetry sequence, Heavensgate, he recalls in the same interview:
I was working under the spell of the impressionist composers Debussy, Caesar Franck, Ravel, and I think that, as in the music of these composers who write of a watery, shadowy, nebulous world, with the semitones of dream and the nuances of the rainbow, there isn’t any clearly defined outline in my work: this is what happened in my ‘Heavensgate’.
It is appropriate to honor the musical roots of Okigbo’s art as an integral part of the 2007 celebration of his legacy. To this end, three varieties of musical performances related to or inspired by his poetry have been worked into the program, Hurrah for Thunder!
The first, Lustra Variations, is a symphonic poem for the piano composed by the late Joshua Uzoigwe (1946-2005), based on a set of three poems, “Lustra” (Heavensgate IV), by Christopher Okigbo. It consists of a central theme with six variations, with each variation representing a sonic impression of different segments of Okigbo’s poems. This unique composition which adroitly illustrates the interface between African traditional and European classical musical motifs in Okigbo’s poetry will be performed both as an introit and conclusion to Hurrah for Thunder! by a young, New York based Japanese pianist, Aya Kato, further illustrating the cross-cultural appeal of Okigbo’s art.
The second, comprising Solo Performances of Igbo and Yoruba Folk Songs, as arranged by the outstanding Nigerian composer, Joshua Uzoigwe (1946-2005), by his companion, the Nigerian soprano, Joyce Adewumi, accompanied by Aya Kato. The songs are not merely an arrangement of folk lyrics but artistic re-compositions of traditional melodies. In them, traditional tunes are presented not in their usual order/phrase organization. They are instead, divided into motives which serve as tools for creating a contemporary art-song. But in performance, both the voice and piano play equal but independent roles as in the African sense of music making.
The third musical performance, Predominantly White is a composition for chamber orchestra (with flutes, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, French horns, 9 strings, harp and classical percussion) inspired by dominant “white chamber” imagery in the early sections of Okigbo’s Distances) The work of Belgian Composer Erwin Vann, professor of composition (jazz department) at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels (Erasmus), Predominantly White embodies the influence of the French impressionists (Debussy, Ravel, Franck) on the poetry of Christopher Okigbo. The performance will be directed by the composer with the University of Massachusetts Chamber Orchestra.
Films Inspired by Okigbo’s Life and Works
Further with the sponsorship of the William Joiner Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston, two films based on Okigbo’s life and works will be screened and discussed in the course of the conference, namely Meditation on Okigbo’s Labyrinths, a short film by the Nigerian Filmmaker, Toyin Adepoju, now based in the Comparative Literature Programme, University College, London, and The Pilot and the Passenger (or Who killed Christopher Okigbo), by the award-winning German-Nigerian filmmaker, Branwen Kiemute Okpako. Both films will be show in the afternoon of the first day of the conference (Thursday, September 20: see program).
The program will begin with Meditation on Okigbo’s Labyrinths, a short film of only 5 minutes inspired by Adepoju’s explorations of ideas in endogenous African systems of thought, and the poetic cycle Labyrinths by Okigbo. The film develops its effects through associations between images, written texts and music. Selections from Okigbo’s poetry are juxtaposed with other expressions of the philosophical and artistic significance of underwater life that recur in Okigbo’s work, including photographs by the great underwater photographer David Doubilet, texts of the Upanishads, poems by the Christian mystic St. John of the Cross, and the haunting landscapes of the Russian artist Nicholas Roerich. In addition, the film’s musical score derives from Christian Gregorian chants and Sanskrit chants from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita in order to evoke the numinous resonances of Okigbo’s work.
The main film of the day, The Pilot and the Passenger (or Who killed Christopher Okigbo), by Branwen Kiemute Okpako (winner of the 2000 Bavarian documentary film prize and First Prize at the 2001 Dubrovnik Documentary Film Festival), is a 90-minute documentary film-essay which explores Okigbo’s life as a poet and soldier. Completed by the summer of 2007, the film was inspired, according to Branwen Okpakpo, “by Chris's reference to the pilot Palinirus and himself.” She further comments:.”It is a documentary essay combining the classical interview style (with friends, colleagues and family of Christopher Okigbo) but it is shot through with images and dramatizations inspired by Christophers poetry and the accounts related in interview. Christopher Okigbo is an almost mythological figure and his life has a poetic, symbolic quality that takes any film out of the realm of the conventional documentation of dates and places and the relating of anecdotes, into the sphere of the spiritual and philosophical.” The film draws from several hours of interviews and lots of impressions from Ojoto to Lagos and Ibadan, as Ms Okpako further notes: “I went to Brussels and met with Obi (Chris's daughter) and she showed me her fathers poetry and we talked about the project (it was actually her idea for me to make this film). Last summer (2004) I was able to start primary shooting in Nigeria. I visited Ojoto and filmed the river (Idoto) which is the inspiration to many of Christopher's poems, his cousin guided us to the place. We also filmed the various shrines for which Christopher (as reincarnation of his maternal Grandfather, the priest) was responsible. We filmed with Bede Okigbo in Ojoto and he told us a lot about Christopher's life. In Ibadan I was able to get a guided tour around Cambridge house where Christopher lived when he ran the Cambridge university press. Joop Burkhaut took us around and told a few stories he also gave me footage of the opening ceremony which was attended by Pius Okigbo, Wole Soyinka and JP Clark to name a few. Also Tunji Oyelana was there. We visited Demas Nwoko in his incredible house in Delta State and he told us all about the days of the Mbari club, as did Chief Higo in a really fun interview on his golf course in Ibadan.” Needless to say, the film promises to provid powerful visual backdrops to Okigbo’s biographical profile.
Future Conferences and Diversity Workshops
While the present celebration (for 2007-2008) focuses on Christopher Okigbo, the larger project of which it is a part, is already looking ahead to the programs for the subsequent three years, beginning with Chinua Achebe (2008), celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of his landmark novel, Things Fall Apart, widely read at all levels of the US school system; Wole Soyinka (2009), focusing on global culture and consciousness in the mythic universe of his works; and Ngugi wa Thiong’o (2010), focusing on the past, present and future of literature in African languages.. In these subsequent programs, the authors around whom the program will be developed with be examined along with a constellation of younger authors and other artists influenced by them as well as those by whom they have been influenced..
Chukwuma Azuonye, Convener,
Professor of African Literature, University of Massachusetts, Boston,
Fellow, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University
(azuonye@umb.edu; Chukwuma.azuonye@fas.harvard.edu).
SPONSORS
· Afriresource web link.
CONSULTANTS AND FACILITATORS
1. Chinua Achebe, Novelist, Poet, Essayist, Steven Professor of Literature, 2, Walters Road, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504, USA (cachebe@bard.edu).
2. Kevin Bowen, Professor and Director, William Joiner Institute for War and Sovial Consequences, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA 02125 (kevin.bowen@umb.edu).
3. Checole, Kassahun, Publisher, Africa World Press, Inc. & The Red Sea Press, Inc., 541 W. Ingham Avenue, Ste. B, Trenton, NJ 08638 (awprsp@verizon.net)
4. Michael Echeruo, Poet, William Safire Professor of Modern Letters, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13078 (mecheruo@syr.edu)
5. Romanus Egudu, Poet, Emeritus Professor of English and Literature, University of Benin, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria (romegudu@yahoo.com)
6. Uzoma Esonwanne, Professor of English & Comparative Literature, University of Toronto. 7 King's College, Medical Arts Building, 170 St. George Street, Totonto, Ontario M5R2M8 (uzoma.esonwanne@utoronto.ca).
7. Robert Fraser, Professor of English, Post-Colonial Literatures Program, Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK (R.Fraser@open.ac.uk)
8. Winston Langley, Associate Chancellor, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA 02125 (winston.langley@umb.edu)
9. Barbara Lewis, Director, William Monroe Trotter Institute for Black Culture and History, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA 02125 (barbara.lewis@umb.edu)
10. Henry Louis Gates, Jr, Alphonse Fletcher Professor and Director, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (hgates@fas.harvard.edu).
11. Bernth Lindfors, Emeritus Professor of English and African Literature & Founding Editor, Research in African Literatures, University of Texas at Austin, TX (Bernth.Lindfors@yahoo.com).
12. Nkiru Nzegwu, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies Binghamton University, NY (x); .Afriresource web link.
13. Emmanuel Obiechina, Critic, Poet and Recently Visiting Professor of Literature of African Literature, Harvard University, and former Vice-Chancellor, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.State, Nigeria (emmanuelobiechina@yahoo.com)
14. Isidore Okpewho, Critic, Novelist and Distinguished Professor of English, Africana Studies and Comparative Literature, Binghamton University, NY.(iokpewho@binghamton.edu).
15. Edwin Nadason Thumboo, Emeritus Professor/Professorial Fellow, Department of English Language & Literature, National University of Singapore. Tel: 65-6874-6849/3913 Office: The University Cultural Centre.
16. Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate, Playwright, Poet, Novelist, Essayist, First Alphonse Fletcher Fellow, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (eniogun@aol.com)
PROGRAM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 - FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2007
[Sherman Gallery, Boston University, Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA]
Concurrent Exhibition of Art Works Celebrating Okigbo’s Modernity & Poetics
· Another Modernity: Works on Paper by Uche Okeke
· Nigerian Poetics: Works by Obiora Udechukwu
