 Pan African Pocket Poets colophon, presumably designed by Georgina Beier. | |
| Founded | 1971 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Ulli Beier |
| Country of origin | Nigeria |
Pan African Pocket Poets (PPP) was a series of 5 chapbooks published by Ulli Beier in Ife, Nigeria between 1971 and 1972. They feature works by 4 Nigerian poets, as well as John Kasaipwalova, from Papua New Guinea. The Nigerian Civil War is a common theme throughout the collection.
Beier lived in Nigeria between 1950 and 1966, during which time he began various publishing enterprises including Odu: A Journal of Yoruba Studies (1954), Black Orpheus: A Journal of African and Afro-American Literature (1957) and The Mbari Club (1961). [1]
In 1971, he was invited back to Nigeria to take up the post of Research Professor and Director of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ife, Ile-Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University). Beier remained in post for three years, during which time he published the Pan African Pocket Poets series. [2] The covers of each book were designed by his wife, Georgina Beier.
Beier’s influence on the development of Nigerian literature is significant, but his legacy is marred by literary hoaxes and cultural appropriation. [3]
The first volume in the series was provided by John Kasaipwalova. Kasaipwalova was a writer from Papua New Guinea, where Beier had been based from 1967 until 1971. [1] The title appeared in both the Pan African Pocket Poets and Beier’s Papua Pocket Poets series.
Described as a ‘Ginsbergish’ poem, Reluctant Flame imagines anti-colonial revolution as an erupting volcano and is regarded as the most overtly political composition published by Beier at the time. [4] [5]
The second volume featured a collection of poems by Onwuchekwa Jemie, a writer from Nigeria. The title poem had previously appeared in Présence Africaine. [6] Included was a long poem ‘Biafra: Requiem for the Dead in War’ that confidently predicts success in the Nigerian Civil War. [7]
The third volume was authored by Okogbule Wonodi, formerly known as Glory Okogbule Nwanodi. This was Wonodi's second collection of poems, and includes works that deal with social problems that emerged during the Nigerian civil war. [8]
The fourth volume is by Pol Nnamuzikam Ndu, an Igbo poet originally from Ihiala. At the time of publication, Ndu was studying for a PhD in Afro-American literature at the State University of New York, Buffalo, having been awarded an Aggrey Fellowship. In 1976, he returned to Nigeria, but was killed in a car crash later that year. [9]
Included within the 18 poems are ‘Golgotha’ and ‘Golgotha Revisited’, which were later retitled respectively as ‘July 1966’ and ‘Biafra Revisited’ in the author’s collection Songs for Seers (New York: Nok, 1974). [10]
The series concludes with Oyeleke Fowowe’s Who has blood? The collection is described as being riddled with the imagery of death. Like the previous collections in the series, Fowowe writes about the Nigerian civil war, but also laments others who have died in other circumstances. [11]
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka Hon. FRSL, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, for "in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.
Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo was a Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as an outstanding postcolonial English-language African poet and one of the major modernist writers of the 20th century.
The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry is a 1984 poetry anthology edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier. It consists mainly of poems written in English and English translations of French or Portuguese poetry; poems written in African languages were included only in the authors' translations. The poems are arranged by the country of the poet, then by their date of birth. The following sections list the poets included in the collection.
Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) is a federal government-owned university that is located in the ancient city of Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria. The university was founded in 1961 and classes commenced in October 1962 as the University of Ife by the regional government of Western Nigeria, which was led by Samuel Ladoke Akintola. It was renamed "Obafemi Awolowo University" on 12 May 1987 in honour of Obafemi Awolowo (1909–1987), the first premier of the Western Region of Nigeria, whose idea the university was.
Gerald Moore was an English independent scholar.
Syl Cheney-Coker is a poet, novelist, and journalist from Freetown, Sierra Leone. Educated in the United States, he has a global sense of literary history, and has introduced styles and techniques from French and Latin American literatures to Sierra Leone. He has spent much of his life in exile from his native country, and has written extensively about the condition of exile and the view of Africa from an African abroad.
Ọ̀rànmíyàn, also known as Ọranyan, was a legendary Yoruba king from the kingdom of Ile-Ife, and the founder of the Oyo empire. Although he was the youngest of the descendants of Oduduwa, he became the prime heir of Oduduwa upon his return to claim his grandfather's throne.
Nkem Nwankwo was a Nigerian novelist and poet.
Amatoritsero Ede is a Nigerian-Canadian poet. He had written under the name "Godwin Ede" but he stopped bearing his Christian first name as a way to protest the xenophobia and racism he noted in Germany, a "Christian" country, and to an extent, to protest Western colonialism in general. Ede has lived in Canada since 2002, sponsored as a writer-in-exile by PEN Canada. He was a Hindu Monk with the Hare Krishna Movement, and has worked as a Book Editor with a major Nigerian trade publisher, Spectrum Books.
Chief Horst Ulrich Beier, commonly known as Ulli Beier, was a German editor, writer and scholar who had a pioneering role in developing literature, drama and poetry in Nigeria, as well as literature, drama and poetry in Papua New Guinea.
Chinweizu Ibekwe, known mononymously as Chinweizu, and also by the pen-name Maazi Chinweizu, is a Nigerian critic, essayist, poet, and journalist. While studying in the United States during the Black Power movement, Chinweizu became influenced by the philosophy of the Black Arts Movement. He is commonly associated with Black orientalism and emerged as one of the leading figures in contemporary Nigerian journalism, writing a highly influential column in The Guardian of Lagos.
Dennis Chukude Osadebay was a Nigerian politician, poet, journalist and former premier of the now defunct Mid-Western Region of Nigeria, which now comprises Edo and Delta State. He was one of the pioneering Nigerian poets who wrote in English.
Carlton Lindsay Barrett, also known as Eseoghene, is a Jamaican-born poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist and photographer, whose work has interacted with the Caribbean Artists Movement in the UK, the Black Arts Movement in the US, and pan-Africanism in general. Leaving Jamaica in the early 1960s, he moved to Britain, where he freelanced as a broadcaster and journalist, also travelling and living elsewhere in Europe, before deciding to relocate to West Africa. Since the latter 1960s he has been based mainly in Nigeria, of which country he became a citizen in the mid-1980s, while continuing his connection to cultural ventures in the UK and US.
Funso Aiyejina is a Nigerian poet, short story writer, playwright and academic. He is the former Dean of Humanities and Education and current Professor Emeritus at the University of the West Indies. His collection of short fiction, The Legend of the Rockhills and Other Stories, won the 2000 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best First Book (Africa).
African poetry encompasses the wide variety of traditions arising from Africa's 55 countries and from evolving trends within different literary genres. The field is complex, partly because of Africa's original linguistic diversity but primarily because of the devastating effect of slavery and colonisation, which resulted in English, Portuguese and French, as well as creole or pidgin versions of these European languages, being spoken and written by Africans across the continent.
Bakare Gbadamosi is a Yoruba poet, anthropologist and short story writer from Nigeria.
Richard Carl Ntiru is a Ugandan poet and editor. His only collection of poetry is Tensions (1971), which is rich in imagery reminiscent of the poetry of Christopher Okigbo and Paul Ndu. Ntiru deals with issues of contemporary East Africa and while he acknowledges other poets in other literatures, he consciously explores the divisions within human society and critiques his society's attitudes towards the unfortunate. Apart from poetry he has also written a radio play and short stories, and his poems "If it is true", and "The miniskirt" are included in The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry (1999).
Black Orpheus was a Nigeria-based literary journal founded in 1957 by German expatriate editor and scholar Ulli Beier that has been described as "a powerful catalyst for artistic awakening throughout West Africa". Its name derived from a 1948 essay by Jean-Paul Sartre, "Orphée Noir", published as a preface to Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, edited by Léopold Sédar Senghor. Beier wrote in an editorial statement in the inaugural volume that "it is still possible for a Nigerian child to leave a secondary school with a thorough knowledge of English literature, but without even having heard of Léopold Sédar Senghor or Aimé Césaire", so Black Orpheus became a platform for Francophone as well as Anglophone writers.
The Mbari Club was a centre for cultural activity by African writers, artists and musicians that was founded in Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1961 by Ulli Beier, with the involvement of a group of young writers including Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe. Mbari, an Igbo concept related to "creation", was suggested as the name by Achebe. Among other Mbari members were Christopher Okigbo, J. P. Clark and South African writer Ezekiel Mphahlele, Frances Ademola, Demas Nwoko, Mabel Segun, Uche Okeke, Arthur Nortje and Bruce Onobrakpeya.
Rowland O. Abiodun, b. 1941, earned his B.A. in Fine Arts in 1965 from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, and his M.A. in Art History from the University of Toronto. Born in Owo Nigeria, Abiodun has written extensively about the body of art produced by the Yoruba people of modern-day Nigeria and Benin. Abiodun is the John C. Newton Professor of Art, the History of Art, and Black Studies at Amherst College. He has served as a director of the African Studies Association.