Gabriel Okara
Gabriel Okara was a prominent Nigerian poet, novelist, and literary figure, born on April 24, 1921, in Bumoundi, Nigeria. He received an education in art and literature, attending several institutions including the Government College of Umuahia and Yaba Higher College. Known for his significant contributions to literature, Okara gained acclaim for his poetry and short stories, winning the British Council's short story competition in 1952 and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1979 for his collection "The Fisherman's Invocation." His works often reflected his Ijaw heritage and explored themes related to African culture and identity, establishing him as a key figure in modernist literature within Nigeria and beyond. Throughout his career, he held various roles in journalism and public service, including as a principal information officer and a lecturer at the University of Nigeria. Okara's literary legacy continues to be celebrated, with festivals and collections honoring his contributions, notably the Gabriel Okara Literary Festival held in 2017. He passed away on March 25, 2019, at the age of ninety-seven, leaving behind a rich body of work that remains influential in contemporary literature.
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Subject Terms
Gabriel Okara
Poet
- Born: April 24, 1921
- Birthplace: Bumoundi, Ijaw District, western Nigeria
- Died: March 25, 2019
- Place of death: Yenagoa, Nigeria
Biography
Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara was born April 24, 1921, at Bumoundi, in the Ijaw District, western Nigeria, to businessman Prince Samson G. Okara and Martha Olodiama. Okara attended St. Peter’s and Proctor’s Memorial School from 1926 to 1935. He was awarded a scholarship to the Government College of Umuahia, which he left in 1940, transferring to Yaba Higher College, where he specialized in art. He taught briefly at the Ladilac Institute in Yaba, and then at the British Overseas Airway Corporation in Gambia from 1941 to 1944. Okara was married and divorced three times, widowed in 1983, and had four children.
In 1945, Okara returned to Nigeria, where he worked as a bookbinder and journalist for the Government Press until 1954. In 1952, he won the British Council’s short story competition for “The Iconoclast.” In 1953, his poem “Call of the River Nun” won the silver cup in poetry in the Nigerian Festival of Arts.
From 1955 to 1959, Okara was an assistant publicity officer in the Ministry of Information, then attended Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Illinois from 1959 to 1960. Upon returning to Nigeria, he worked as a publicity officer from 1960 to 1962, then as the principal information officer of the Eastern Region Government Information Office from 1964 to 1967. In 1964, Okara also became a part-time lecturer in English at the University of Nigeria at Enugu. His novel, The Voice, was published that year.
During the Nigerian Civil War, Okara was the director of the Cultural Affairs Division of the Biafran Ministry of Information from 1967 to 1969. After the war ended in early 1970, Okara became the principal secretary to the governor of Rivers State and then founded and served as the general manager of the Rivers State Broadcasting Corporation from 1971 to 1975. He was also the founder and editor of the newspaper Nigerian Tide. After he retired in 1975, Okara served as commissioner for information and broadcasting and then as the writer-in-residence for the Rivers State Council on Arts and Culture from 1977 to 1983. In 1982, Okara received an honorary doctorate degree by the University of Port Harcourt in Rivers State.
Okara’s work was published in numerous journals, as well as in the anthology Pergamon Poets from Oxford University Press in 1968. In 1979, he was a joint winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for “The Fisherman’s Invocation,” the title poem of his book of poetry published in 1978. The book contained a collection of Okara’s previously published poetry, since his unpublished poems, short stories, and radio plays were destroyed during the civil war. In 1992 he published two collections of children’s poetry, Little Snake and Little Frog and An Adventure to Juju Island . In 2004 he published the poetry collection The Dreamer, His Vision, which was a cowinner of the Nigeria Prize for Literature in 2005. That was followed by another poetry collection, As I See It, in 2006.
In 2016, a collection of Okara’s previously published poems was republished in Gabriel Okara: Collected Poems, edited by Brenda Marie Osbey. The following year, the Gabriel Okara Literary Festival was held at the University of Port Harcourt in his honor.
Okara was a founding member of the Nigerian English Studies Association and of the Association of Nigerian Authors, and he continued to lecture on poetry and Ijaw (Ijo) and African culture late into his life. Okara is considered one of the founders of modernism in Nigerian and African Anglophone literature. On March 25, 2019, Okara died at the age of ninety-seven.
Bibliography
Bokamba, Eyamba G. “African Englishes and Creative Writing.” World Englishes 34.3 (2015): 315–35. Literary Reference Center. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.
Ebi, Yeibo. “Gabriel Okara’s The Voice as Social Discourse: A Lexico-Semantic Perspective.” International Journal of English Linguistics 2 (2011): 1–9. Directory of Open Access Journals. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.
Elimimian, Isaac I. “Language and Meaning in Gabriel Okara’s Poetry.” CLA Journal 38.3 (1995): 276. MasterFILE Complete. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.
Maduakor, Obi. “Myth and Mysticism in Gabriel Okara’s The Voice.” Commonwealth Essays and Studies 15.2 (1993): 58–65. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.
Okara, Gabriel. “Achebe is Not Dead, Says Nonagenarian Poet, Gabriel Okara.” Interview by Julius Bokoru. Premium Times. Premium Times, Nigeria, 7 Apr. 2013. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.
Osbey, Brenda Marie. Gabriel Okara. N.p.: U Nebraska P, 2016. Digital file.
Staff, Harriet. "Nigerian Negritudist Gabriel Okara Dies at 97." Poetry Foundation, 28 Mar. 2019,www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2019/03/nigerian-negritudist-gabriel-okara-dies-at-97. Accessed 19 July 2019.