AWF Hosts Gabriel Okara

One of the elders of Nigerian literature, Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara, will top the bill for the August 29 edition of the Guest Writer Session hosted by the Abuja Writers’ Forum (AWF). The 88-year-old Bayelsan who has recently been inducted as an honorary fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters(NAL) will read from a cross-section of his works including some new material.
Gabriel Okara is generally regarded as the first significant English-language black African poet, the first African poet to write in a modern style, and the first Nigerian writer to publish in and join the editorial staff of the influential literary journal Black Orpheus (started in 1957). A Nigerian "Negritudist," he is also seen as a link between colonial poetry and the vigorous modernist writing that began to appear in Nigeria around the time of national independence in 1960.
Okara’s forte is poetry as evidenced by his laurels in that genre including the prestigious Commonwealth Literary Prize for “The Fisherman’s Invocation” and the coveted NLNG Prize for Literature in 2005 for His Dreamer, His Vision. However he is also interested in fiction and has to his credit – the experimental The Voice published in 1978 and believed by some critics as the inspiration for Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Soza Boy. He has written four books for children and has two forthcoming novels.
 Okara retired from public service in 1975 and the old Rivers State government appointed him writer-in-residence, in the state’s Ministry of Arts and Culture for a brief period. His approach to writing is underpinned by the conscious utilisation of “African ideas, African philosophy and African folklore and imagery to the fullest extent possible.”

Okara is on record as saying that “the only way to use them effectively is to translate them almost literally from the African language native to the writer into what ever European language he is using as his medium of expression. I have endeavoured in my works to keep as close as possible to the vernacular expressions. For, from a word, a group of words, a sentence and even a name in any African language, one can glean the social norms, attitudes, and values of a people.
“In order to capture the vivid images of African speech, I had to eschew the habit of expressing my thoughts first in English. It was difficult at first, but I had to learn. I had to study each Ijaw expression I used to discover the probable situation in which it was used in order to bring out the nearest meaning in English. I found it a fascinating exercise.”
Okara’s evening appearance at Pen and Pages Bookstore, Abuja, venue of the Guest Writer Sessions will be preceded by  the monthly creative writing session by 11am at  Chesbury Hotel, Gwani Street, Zone 4, Wuse Abuja, where he will share on his techniques and philosophy of writing. The other resource person at the workshop is the Barbadian writer Macleisha Horne who will take the second part of the fiction module she had taught at the July workshop. Ms Horne participated in the National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA) in Barbados 1996 and won a silver award for a short story entitled “Uncle” as well as the Prime Minister’s Incentive award for the most promising entrant.  In 2004 she won silver again for poetry.  Her Poem “Remembering St Vincent” was published in the Anthology The Hole produced by the Foundation Press.  “Chasms” was published in VoicesNet Anthology 10 in 2005.  She is a member of the Barbados Writers Collective.   Ms. Horne is currently working on her first novel.
Okara’s Abuja reading is being sponsored by the Seriake Dickson Foundation. Sharing the bill with Okara will be Lady Gesiere Brisibe-Dorgu, a prodigious Abuja-based writer and self-taught painter. There will be the usual side-attraction of mini-art exhibition, performance poetry and live music.

Abdullahi Abubakar,
Public Relations Officer (PRO),
Abuja Writers’ Forum (AWF),
Abuja
08034519159
abujawriters@fastermail.com