Critical Essays On Christopher Okigbo

One of the best and most widely anthologized Nigerian poets, ("Heavensgate, Limits" and "Silences") he was killed while fighting in the war for Biafran independence from Nigeria.

A collection of essays and reviews, both favourable and negative, about the Igbo poet. The book begins with a memorial essay by Chinua Achebe. Other contributors examine the imagery that Okigbo drew from nature, history and politics, exploring the surrealistic qualities of his work.

Biography of the Nigerian poet whose work combined Igbo mysticism and classical influences.

Poetry is often viewed as culturally homogeneous—“stubbornly national,” in T. S. Eliot’s phrase, or “the most provincial of the arts,” according to W. H. Auden. But in A Transnational Poetics, Jahan Ramazani uncovers the ocean-straddling energies of the poetic imagination—in modernism and the Harlem Renaissance; in post–World War II North America and the North Atlantic; and in ethnic American, postcolonial, and black British writing. Cross-cultural exchange and influence are, he argues, among the chief engines of poetic development in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Reexamining the work of a wide array of poets, from Eliot, Yeats, and Langston Hughes to Elizabeth Bishop, Lorna Goodison, and Agha Shahid Ali, Ramazani reveals the many ways in which modern and contemporary poetry in English overflows national borders and exceeds the scope of national literary paradigms. Through a variety of transnational templates—globalization, migration, travel, genre, influence, modernity, decolonization, and diaspora—he discovers poetic connection and dialogue across nations and even hemispheres.

Written during the Nigerian-Biafran War of the late 1960s, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo boldly tackles questions of Pan-Africanism and independence - with the answers leading to blissful immortality or eternal damnation... After a fatal car accident, Hamisi wakes up in a strange land called After-Africa – an afterworld for all Africans who have died since history began. He soon finds out, however, that his position in the afterlife hangs in the balance. To be allowed to stay, Hamisi must participate in the absurd trial of the renowned poet and solider, Christopher Okigbo, who was killed on the front lines. His crime? Choosing war over his art... The Trial of Christopher Okigbo is a wondrously surreal examination into the responsibilities of art and war and their uncomfortable coexistence. '[The Trial of Christopher Okigbo is] its own best proof that important political questioning and art are not mutually exclusive.' New York Times 'Whether in speech or in writing, Mazrui dissected and unravelled Africa in a delightful manner.' Guardian

This book is the first comparative work of its kind to provide an extended analysis of the contribution of Kamau Brathwaite and Christopher Okigbo. It considers the poetic works of these two artists as they responded to the transformations taking place within Africa and the Caribbean during the Independence period. Some of the issues discussed include: politics and art, religion, spirituality, traditional culture versus popular culture, language and identity, literature and orality, cyber-culture and identity. This book highlights some of the similarities and differences in the life and work of these two poets and examines various aspects of their style. It provides a clearer understanding of the stances these artists took on crucial issues that would shape the face of their respective societies way beyond the Independence period.