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Scroll down to read the article. time jazz musician and, most uniquely of all, est rank and quality for outstanding excel- a poet. No job was beneath him, no task too lence. Almost prophetic, his vision and his daunting, no challenge too intimidating for a sounds were certainly rooted in the social soul that was free of cant and humbug and for culture of the time; and since the malaise of e arrived in 1932 wearing a mind that could only be described as hum- which he wrote and against which he warned a buliet scar on his ble almost to the point of acute intellectual has now come home full blown to roost, his throat; his grandfather arrogance. poems ring today with astonishing freshness. had died of a bullet wound in a war on be More at home in Latin and Greek than in Although he had abounding zest of life, half of his town, Ojoto. English literature, he read all that came his Christopher could, at any time, withdraw HThe legend of Christopher was that he was a way, rejected much of what he read and built from life to concentrate his mind and thought reincarnation of his grandfather, Ikejiofor; his own aesthetics and poetic grammar by his singularly on the work before him. He could, and well he might be for he was small and own effort. He was immersed in the current and often did, as occasion demanded, retreat wiry like his grandfather, had a shrill voice philosophic rave of the time: he devoured the into himself for two three days with little like him, was as stubborn and obstinate and existentialism of Martin Heidegger and Jean food but armed only with a pen and paper to almost as invariably right as he and as un- Paul Satre but rejected its nihilism and inac- scribble all day and all night long until the daunted by challenges. His parents named tion. He was fascinated by the Dadaist move- last drop of verse in him had oozed out onto him Ifekandu - meaning 'greater than life'; ment of the twenties but rejected as infantile the pages of the note paper. they baptised him Christopher, the name he its manifesto as presented by Crosby except wore to his grave. for the precept that the artist should strive for He had the most abiding respect for two of his what the movement contemporaries with whom he thought he He showed his gut early by learn- called pure po- formed a trinity: in novel and ing to cry unremittingly even with- etry, namely, in drama with himself in po- out provocation, to cry (or better A Toast of etry. Their galaxy had also very still to shriek) even more so when distinguished satellites close by: provoked, to master the alphabet on John Pepper Clark, his own before he was taught to in the literary and Demas Nwoko read and write, to drive five ton Christopher etc in the visual arts. He had, how- school lorry (of course, without per- ever, placed himself above the pale mission) before he had any driving that he of competit on in his chosen field. How else lesson and for which, of course, he should can one explain his refusal to be nominated was appropriately punished by the Okigbo write not nec- for the competition for the Langston Hughes school Headmaster; to play the trum- PIUS OKIGBO essarily to commu- award for African poetry in which, in spite of pet, to play the piano without being nicate but toexpress him- himself, he won the first prize, or his para- able to read a word of music, to read for a self. The reading aloud of the poetry of Allen doxical behaviour in agreeing to travel to University degree in the Classics without Ginsburg, Fellingetti, Duncan, Brother Kampala, Uganda, for a conference of writ- any previous foundation whatever at school Antoninus and the crowd of the Beat Genera- ers at the expense of the organisers only to in Latin or Greek, to write verses better in tion was just coming unto the scene in mount the rostrum and refuse to read his Greek than in English, to be engaged in a America. For Christopher, the poet's task poetry to non poets. University as Assistant librarian without any was to present his thoughts in significant training in librarianship. These and more form, to address reason through sense. He Chris rejected the label of African writer; he marked Christopher out as a boy of many therefore wrote a poetry that read better ac- was not a Nigerian or an African poet; he was gifts and talents and someone to be watched companied by the music of either DeBussy simply a poet, whose tastes and sensibilities and guided to greater heights to find his or Duke Ellington as the mood dictated. Yet, would make him a poet in any colour or mettle in the appropriate calling. he demanded of himself and his peers the climate or vegetation. That twenty-seven highest rigour of thought and language. A years after his death, with no new work purist, he would refine and refine and refine coming or likely to come from him, he is still his poems until the final product showed the read avidly more abroad than at home and fter graduating from University, he highest economy of words and phrase often revered everywhere is, perhaps, the greatest did all manner of jobs as occasion embedded in a private vocabulary of his own tribute that can be paid any artist of note this A demanded and as his temperament and almost unintelligible to the reader. It did side of eternity. It is this permanent lustre changed: sometime cigarette salesman for not matter that the reader would mistake his that makes Christopher Okigbo the poet's the Nigerian Tobacco Company, sometime local -idiom for some abstruse mythological poet. tutor in English and Latin in a secondary reference taken from his vast arsenal of Greek or Latin literature. school atFiditi (in Oyo State), political activ- Chris was in his life time and in his death the ist on the near anarchist side of the divide, greatest friend I ever had; it was not because civil servant, failed businessman, resident Chris was my brother for he had other broth- representative of a major publishing house ers and I too had them, but because between (for which this very building was hired as his [hristopher plunged into the creative us there was a total communion of souls and official residence), librarian, publisher in his page of his life of only ten or so of mind. We both shared the same joys and own right, and soldier. In his free time, he years and wrote as if he knew he had laughter in reading and re-reading the Greek was a chess enthusiast, an outstanding crick- cno tomorrow; in that time, he created a work and Latin classics in the original: Vergil, eter, a prolific and recondite raconteur, a part marked not by volume but only by the high- Tacitus, Cicero, Homer etc., or the English

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The battered Nigerian psyche of today, the anomie and the catalepsis we see, hear and smell all around us, the lingering living death that casts its pall over us, the anguish and the torment of body and soul that cry out all the time from the wizened faces of infants - these are today's sources of Christopher Okigbo's poetic vi- sion of thirty years ago. Of such stuff was this extraordinary genius made that his fame far outshone that of any one of the members of his vastly distinguished family that had at one and the same time a world class forest pathologist, an economist, a lawyer, an agrono- mist as well as the poet laureate Okigbo's last residence, Cambridge House, , as it is today himself. He was indeed a meteor, and like a meteor he flashed masters - Mallarme, Joyce, Elliot, Pound, sionate and enduring love. through the sky for a short speck of small letter Cummings, Rimbaud, not to talk thirty-five years, which is indeed merely a of the standard University English classroom dot in infinite time, and dug a hole in the classics of the middle and later period. For I, ground for himself. too, had read Latin and Greek in my own hristopher has been tried (by Ali earlier training, adventured towards a degree Mazrui) for exhibiting and reveal in English literature only to give it up two C ing a personal commitment to the thirds of the way to finally take a degree in eradication of the social evils of his times. So e was born wearing the mark of war; modern history. Is it any wonder then that I be it. Some of us are nothing if not snobs he died of bullet wounds sustained should have the rare privilege to have intro- writing for snobs; some of us are merely H at a war he fought on behalf of his duced him to the literature of the American aesthetes who would step over the murk new country, . He died at the hands of exiles: Hemmingway, Dos Passos, Elliot, around us and live as if nothing was wrong. his soJcalled countrymen, at Opi junction, at Pound, Crosby, Cowley, among the more Chris lived intensely, felt intensely and ex- the outskirts of the University he had helped well known. pressed himself intensely. Only someone to build and nurture; he died at the tender age with the most abstruse form of taxidermy of thirty-five, in the defence of his most t\J51~*tJ I /l/< \ could have 1 ived through the Eastern Nigeria cherished values: honour, valour, truth, jus- of 1966-70 and pretend that the psycho pa- tice, equity, integrity and, most of all, free- ndowed with a curious charm built on thology and trauma of the society could not dom. We have a duty, in his honour, to keep frail physique and penetrating wit touch him and that his life would ever remain these values alive in our younger ones for E and intellect which often transfixed the same again or that he could just go about that is the true testament to his greatness. his friends, Christopher soon learrut that to writing inanities while the life experience Towards this goal, I am authorised to an- get on with his work he had to forget their around him betrayed the most desperate crav- nounce that the OKIGBO famHy is creating faces and their names soon after themomen- ing. Let no one dare to condemn him for we, a Trust to establish and administer, with tary pleasure or thrill was over. He could the members of his immediate family, know effect from the coming anniversary of his therefore, at once, in simultaneous cycles as what it is to lose a revered one having in the death, in October, scholarships and prizes in his moods took him, be both exceedingly same war lost one favourite uncle, two ador- Classics and Poetry in the two Universities warm and exceedingly cold. His friends stood able undergraduate nephews and a favourite that gave Christopher Okigbo his foundation by him to the last; his foes denounced him as brother in Chris. Chris was immersed in the and his freedom: the emotionally a grasshopper. life of his time - for more than any other artist and the University of Nigeria. Even in this of his generation he communed with the so we have been anticipated first by Wole called common man of his time - the market Soyinka, one of the most loyal of his friends, He successfully wooed and, after a whirl- trader, the street hawker, the buka restaura- and now by Chief Berkhout. To both of them wind courtship that would have racked the teur, the foot soldier, the taxi driver. He did I offer my salutations. nerves of any young woman, married Sefi not look down on them and he did not treat Judith Attah, the devoted mother of our ador- them as his inferiors. They were men like able daughter. Obiageli. For Sefi was per- I now give you the toast of CHRISTOPHER him. For he was as easily at home with the OKIGBO the poet, born 1932, died 1967, haps the only girl he met and knew who nobles and the governors as he was with the lived at Cambridge House, UAC Crescent, understood his quixotic personality. And in taxi drivers with whom he could go to eat and return, he showered her with the most pas- Onireke, Ibadan.GR 8 JULY 1994

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