Gabriel Okara

Gabriel Okara was born at Bumoundi, Bayelsa State, in the Niger Delta in 1921 and educated at Government College Umuahia in Nigeria and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He worked as a bookbinder and printer for Federal Government Press at Lagos, served as the director of cultural and information services for the short-lived Republic of Biafra, and was the general manager of the Rivers State newspaper and broadcasting corporations. He is an honorary member of the Pan-African Writers’ Association, a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, and is currently writer in residence at the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. Brenda Marie Osbey is a poet and essayist. Her most recent volumes are History and Other Poems and All Souls: Essential Poems. A native of New Orleans, she is poet laureate emerita of Louisiana and distinguished visiting professor of Africana Studies at Brown University.

• Acknowledgments    Introduction by Brenda Marie Osbey    Part I: The Early LyricsThe Call of the River Nun    Once Upon a Time    Piano and Drums    Were I to Choose    Spirit of the Wind    New Year’s Eve Midnight    You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed    The Mystic Drum    One Night at Victoria Beach    The Snowflakes Sail Gently Down    Adhiambo    To Paveba    “Franvenkirche”    Fantasy    The Passing of a Year    The Gambler    Part II: The Fisherman’s Invocation1: Introit    2: The Invocation    3: The Child-Front    4: Birth Dance of the Child-Front    5: The End    Part III: War PoemsMoods from Songs without Words    Leave Us Alone    I Am Only a Name    The Silent Voice    Suddenly the Air Cracks    Metaphor of a War    Cancerous Growth    Freedom Day    Moon in the Bucket    Flying over the Sahara    Kindly Sprite    Rural Path    Lady and Her Wig    Silent Girl    Cross on the Moon    Rain Lullaby    Come, Come and Listen    Sunday    Dispensing Morning Balm    To a Star    Celestial Song    The Glowering Rat    The Dead a Spirit Demands    Christmas 1971    Welcome Home    Waiting for Her Son    Part IV: Revolt of the GodsArgument I    Argument II    Part V: The Dreamer, His VisionThe Dreamer    Bent Double with Weight    Darkness    The Precipice    Moon Massaged Me to Sleep    Adieu!     Anthem of Silence    Complex Matter    Dispensing Morning Balm    Setting Sun    Beauty beyond Words    Taps Are Dry    Self Preservation     The Little Bird    Morbidity    Smiling Morning    River Nun-2    We Live to Kill and Kill to Live    The Land at Christmas ’93    Ovation Seeker    Mass Transit Buses    Contractors    Civil Servants    Smokers’ Wish    Man Dies, Never Dies    Part VI: Prayers and TributesGive Us Good Leaders    Talking Nonsense    Rural Dweller    Lone Mourner    Apartheid    Spark in the Sky    A Prayer     From Ken to Mike    Rise and Shine    Requiem    Man Polygamous    Mammy-Water & Me    Wedding Bells     To the Lady of the House     For Ada Udechukwu    A Boy’s Dream    Queen    Letter to My Grandson     Babydom Wisdom    Waiting for a Coming    Snow over Home of the Newly Wed    Before I Say Good-Bye (India)     Moon over Heidelberg    Salt of the Earth    Eagle in the Sun    The Aruzzo Farm House    We Shared    Happy Birthday    Chronology    Glossary

“Gabriel Okara [is] the only person who could ever be called both ‘the elder statesman of Nigerian literature and the first Modernist poet of Anglophone Africa.’ Those who know, know who he is; who no know, go know.”-Aaron Bady, Literary Hub “It is with publication of Gabriel Okara’s first poem that Nigerian literature in English and modern African poetry in this language can be said truly to have begun.”-from the introduction by Brenda Marie Osbey