Jewel in the Crown
Austine Amanze Akpuda
Beyond a string of writing fellowships, prizes and other recognition, Ogaga Ifowodo has become one of the most famous and celebrated Nigerian poets of his generation in the period between 1988 and 2007. Ifowodo’s poetry has moved from popular Nigerian newspapers and journals such as The Guardian, Daily Times, Post Express, Okike, Ase, Glendora Review, among others, to international journals like The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry International, Atlanta Review, The Dalhousie Review, Massachusetts Review, Drumvoices Revue and Mantis: A Journal of Poetry, Criticism and Translation.
Ogaga Ifowodo [is] one of the most respected of a younger generation of poets and a major poetic voice."
- Becky Ayebia Clarke, editor Crossing Borders, magazine of the British Council
"The energy of Ifowodo's language ... the lucid and pebble-hard poetic line ... capture with psychological precision ... the devastation of Nigeria's impoversihed Delta region. Among the works that address the Delta crisis, The Oil Lamp is outstanding."
- Chris Dunton, The Sunday Independent of South Africa.
His three published poetry collections, Homeland & other poems (1998), Madiba (2003) and The Oil Lamp, (2005) have set him apart as the veritable chef de file of Nigeria’s new poets. Ifowodo has won three of the most important poetry prizes administered by the Association of Nigerian Authors. These include, in 1992, the ANA Poetry Prize with the manuscript, “Red Rain,” later to be published as Homeland and Other Poems; the 2003 ANA/Cadbury Poetry Prize with Madiba, and the 2005 ANA/NDDC Gabriel Okara Poetry Prize with his highly engaging Niger Delta collection, The Oil Lamp.
A highly respected poet in his homeland, Nigeria, where his coinage ‘the stillborn generation’ has been popularized as a term used to describe his generation of writers mostly born in the 1960s, Ifowodo has also attracted international attention in at least five important ways: through translations of his poems into German, Romanian, and Dutch; invitations to reading and speaking tours/engagements; fellowships and residences, amongst them the Heinrich Böll Haus, Lagenbroich (1996), the City of Asylum in Bremen (1998), the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart (1999), the Künstlerdorf Schöppingen (2004), all in Germany, as well as the famous Iowa International Writers Programme (2000); and, very importantly, through a generous reprinting of his poems in very important anthologies.
Added to these milestones is his honorary membership of the PEN Centres of Germany, Canada and the United States of America. Ifowodo has also won the 1998 Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award of the American PEN Centre and the Free Word award of the Netherlands-based Poets of All Nations.
There is no doubt that the young poet who made an important appearance in Harry Garuba’s edited volume, Voices from the Fringe (1988), has come a long way twenty years after. Among the very significant anthologies where Ifowodo’s poems have appeared are Und auf den Strassen eine Pest Uche Nduka ed. (1996); 25 New Nigerian Poets, Toyin Adewale ed. (2000); Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, Kevin Powell ed. (2000); Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems For Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nii Ayi Kwei Parkes and Kadija Sessay ed. (2005), among others.