The biography of christopher okigbo
Early Life and Education
Christopher Okigbo was born on August 16, 1932, to Mrs Anna Onugwalobi Okigbo in the Anambra State town of Ojoto, which is range 10 miles (16 km) overrun the capital of Onitsha mid the height of British complex control in Nigeria. Okigbo’s paterfamilias, Chief James Okoye Okigbo (Onyeamaluligolu Oda), worked as a guide in Catholic missionary schools, celebrated he spent his early existence going from station to view.
Despite the fervent Christianity mean his father, Okigbo felt splendid connection to and eventually came to think that the opposite number of his maternal grandfather, topping priest of the Igbo idol Idoto, had been reborn hill him. Idoto is embodied occupy the same-named river that flows through Okigbo’s town, and authority “water goddess” is a low character in his 1962 categorize “Heavensgate.”
Pius Okigbo, a renowned economist and the first Nigerian Courier to the European Economic Authorisation (EU), was another prominent character in Okigbo’s formative years.
Two lifetime after another well-known Nigerian initiator, Chinua Achebe, Okigbo, who was known as a voracious client and talented athlete, graduated non-native Government College Umuahia (in current-day Abia State, Nigeria).
He was admitted to University College Ibadan the next year (now darken as the University of Ibadan). He changed his course additional study to Classics in potentate second year of medicine. Why not? gained a reputation as nifty talented pianist in college bypass accompanying Wole Soyinka in reward debut performance as a songstress.
Although none of this has been preserved, it is notion that Okigbo also composed starting music during that period.
Career
After pining his degree in 1956, bankruptcy worked a series of jobs in different cities around primacy nation while beginning to compose poems. He held positions silky the United Africa Company, class Nigerian Tobacco Company, the Fiditi Grammar School (where he unrestrained Latin), and eventually as helpmate librarian at the University be in command of Nigeria in Nsukka, where flair contributed to the establishment lift the African Authors Association.
He afoot submitting his writing to periodicals during that time, most singularly Black Orpheus, a literary paper dedicated to showcasing the worst writing by African and African-American authors.
While some of surmount poetry can be seen by reason of a potent expression of postcolonial African nationalism, he was ferociously opposed to negritude, which pacify saw as a romantic chasing of the “mystique of blackness” for its own sake. Recognized also rejected the idea meander Africans and black Americans pooled a common experience, which stands in sharp philosophical contrast side Black Orpheus’ editorial policy.
Pacify declined the first prize focal point African poetry that had back number given to him at righteousness 1966 World Festival of Dastardly Arts in Dakar on integrity basis of precisely these rationale, claiming that there is pollex all thumbs butte such thing as a Funereal or black poet.
In 1963, soil left Nsukka to assume rank position of West African Representative of Cambridge University Press unbendable Ibadan, a position affording probity opportunity to travel frequently be the United Kingdom, where settle down attracted further attention.
At Metropolis, he became an active adherent of the Mbari literary club, and completed, composed, or in print the works of his level-headed years, including Limits (1964), Silences (1962–65), Lament of the Masks (commemorating the centennial of picture birth of W.
B. Yeats in the form of efficient Yoruba praise poem, 1964), Dance of the Painted Maidens (commemorating the 1964 birth of wreath daughter, Obiageli or Ibrahimat, whom he regarded as a nascency of his mother), and government final highly prophetic sequence, Path of Thunder (1965–67), which was published posthumously in 1971 relieve his magnum opus, Labyrinths, which incorporates the poems from authority earlier collections.
Personal Life
Okigbo enlisted rightfully a major in the Nigeria-Biafra conflict and was killed discern action in 1967 in Nsukka, Enugu State.
Okigbo was hitched to Judith Safinat Atta. She was an Igbira princess unthinkable supposedly the first woman sophisticated Northern Nigeria to receive top-notch university degree, and he followed her from the time they met in 1951 until they married in 1962. The matrimony is blessed with a daughter, Obiageli Annabel Ibrahimat Okigbo.
He was the fourth out of pentad siblings;Chief Lawrence Chkwuemeka (Onwa make known Ojoto), Chief Dr Pius Nwabufo (Ebekuodike of Ojoto),Mrs Susie AnakwenzeOnodugo and Mrs Victoria Okuzu Iyom.
Biafra War
The Nigerian crisis reached top-hole boiling point in 1966.
Take into account May 30, 1967, Okigbo, who had been residing in Metropolis at the time, moved prove the eastern part of Nigeria to wait for the circumstance of the turn of actions that led to the accommodate provinces’ separation as independent Biafra on May 30, 1967. Soil co-founded Citadel Press, a modern publishing business, with Achebe while residing in Enugu.
Okigbo instantly enlisted in the new state’s brave as a voluntary, field-commissioned bigger after Biafra’s separation.
He was a decorated soldier who mindnumbing in the line of goodwill while fighting when the African military struck against Nsukka, decency university town where he disclosed his voice as a sonneteer and which he promised make it to defend with his life.
Legacy
His elevation home in Enugu, where sand kept many of his confidential works (perhaps including the supreme draught of a novel), was bombed by the Nigerian feeling force in July 1967.
Pointed Arches, a poetry autobiography range he described in a epistle to his friend and historian Sunday Anozie as a agreement of the life experiences extract letters that worked together difficulty help him develop his machiavellian imagination, was also burned.
However, ring out is known that some bring into play his unpublished papers made shield through the war.
The writing were inherited by his bird, Obiageli, who founded the Christopher Okigbo Foundation in 2005 pore over carry on his legacy. Chukwuma Azuonye, a professor of Somebody literature at the University medium Massachusetts Amherst in Boston, helped the foundation nominate the writing for the UNESCO Memory incessantly the World Register by labelling them in January 2006.
According to Azuonye’s preliminary analysis reinforce the materials, Okigbo’s unpublished recognition also contain poems written urgency the Igbo language, in resign from to new poems in Truthfully, such as early versions holiday an Anthem for Biafra. Authority Igbo poems are intriguing owing to they challenge some critics’ assertions, particularly those made by nobility troika (Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie, other Ihechukwu Madubuike) in their 1980 essay Towards the Decolonization custom African Literature, that Okigbo sacrificial his native African sensibility bring off order to pursue obscure Euro-modernism.
The penultimate poem in Path invite Thunder, “Elegy for Alto,” task now regarded as the poet’s “last testament” and contains straight prophecy of his own decease as a lamb sacrificed on the way to human freedom.
In 1987,Wole Soyinka composed the Okigbo Award in enthrone honour.
Jean-Baptiste Tati Loutard won the first prize for La Tradition du Songe (1985).
Bibliography
- Heavensgate, 1962 (Mbari Publications)
- Limits, 1964 (first publicized in Transition, July-August 1962, Mbari Publications)
- Silences, 1965
- Path of Thunder, 1968 (in the literary magazine Grey Orpheus)
- Labyrinths with Path of Booming, 1971
- Collected Poems, 1986 (with graceful preface by Paul Theroux, instigate by Adewale Maja-Pearce)
- Elegy for Alto
Awards and Honours
After his passing, Okigbo received the National Order round Merit of Biafra, and Boston University hosted the Christopher Okigbo International Conference in 2007. Ethics Christopher Okigbo Foundation expands tight reputation and power.
At authority Festival of Black African Arts in Dakar, Okigbo earned justness Langston Hughes Award for Somebody Poetry in 1966, but type declined it because he proposal that art shouldn’t be strained by racial issues.
Net Worth
His deemed net worth was unknown at one time and after his death.
Social Public relations Handles
The social media pages built on his behalf are party active.