Tanure Ojaide

Tanure Ojaide (born 1948) is a prolific Nigerian poet and writer. He is noted for his unique stylistic vision and for his intense criticism of imperialism, religion, and other issues. He is regarded as a socio-political and ecocritical poet.

Biography

Tanure Ojaide was born to Urhobo parents from Okpara Inland in Agbon Kingdom of Delta State. He attended the secondary school at Obinomba and Federal Government College, Warri, before proceeding to the University of Ibadan for his degree program in English. He attended Syracuse University for his M.A. in Creative Writing and PhD in English. He later taught at the University of Maiduguri before his appointment as Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has been a visiting scholar and has taught at several universities across the world including Delta State University, Abraka and Kwara State University, Malete.^[1] His poetry is widely read and he is known for his infusion of Urhobo folklore and Udje aesthetics in his poetry.

Awards

Ojaide has won major national and international poetry awards, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Africa Region (1987), the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award (1988), the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for Poetry (1988 and 1997), the Association of Nigerian Authors' Poetry Prize (1988 and 1994) and the Fonlon-Nichols Award.^[2] In 2016, Ojaide won the Nigerian National Order of Merit award, the apex and the most important award for scholastic excellence in Nigeria.^[3]

Poems

• Songs of Myself: A Quartet (Ibadan: Kraft Books, 2015)
• Love Gifts (Lagos: African Heritage Press, 2013)
• The Beauty I Have Seen (Lagos: Malthouse Press Ltd, 2010)
• Waiting for the Hatching of a Cockerel (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2008)
• The Tale of the Harmattan (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2007)
• In the House of Words (Lagos: Malthouse Press Ltd, 2005)
• I Want to Dance and Other Poems (San Francisco: African Heritage Press, 2003)
• In the Kingdom of Songs (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2002).
• Invoking the Warrior Spirit: New and Selected Poems (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000).
• When It No Longer Matters Where You Live (Calabar, Nig.: University of Calabar Press, 1999).
• Invoking the Warrior Spirit (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1999).
• Delta Blues and Home Songs (Ibadan: Kraft Books, 1998).
• Daydream of Ants (Lagos: Malthouse Press Ltd, 1997).
• The Blood of Peace (Oxford, UK: Heinemann, 1991).
• The Fate of Vultures (Lagos: Malthouse Press Ltd, 1990).
• Poems (Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Poetry International, 1988).
• The Endless Song (Lagos: Malthouse Press Ltd, 1988).
• The Eagle's Vision (Detroit: Lotus, 1987).
• Labyrinths of the Delta (New York: Greenfield Review Press, 1986).
• Children of Iroko & Other Poems (New York: Greenfield Review Press, 1973).

Fiction

• Stars of the Long Night (Malthouse Books, 2012).
• The Old Man in a State House & Other Stories (Lagos: African Heritage Press, 2012).
• Matters of the Moment (Lagos: Malthouse, 2009).
• The Debt-Collector and Other Stories (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2009).
• The Activist (A Novel) (Lagos: Farafina Publications, 2006).
• Sovereign Body (A Novel) (Spring, TX: Panther Creek Press, 2004).
• God’s Medicine Men and Other Stories (Lagos, Nigeria: Malthouse Ltd, 2004)

Non-fiction

• Drawing the Map of Heaven: An African Writer in America (Lagos: Malthouse Press, 2012).
• Great Boys: An African Childhood (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1998). (A Memoir)

References

• Tanure Ojaide - Poetry Africa 2005 at University of KwaZulu-Natal
• TanureOjaide.com
• Simon Gikandi, Encyclopedia of African Literature, Routledge, 2002