Okara made a mark on the African literary scene as
one of the major pacesetters. Reported to be the
first renowned English Language black African poet
and the first African modernist writer, Okara is
widely published in influential national and
international journals.


Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara, a poet, novelist and playwright, has died at 97 years — four weeks before his 98th birthday.


He died on Monday in his sleep at his residence at
Okaka Estate in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, after a brief
illness.

Okara made a mark on the African literary scene as
one of the major pacesetters. Reported to be the
first renowned English Language black African poet
and the first African modernist writer, Okara is
widely published in influential national and
international journals.

Born on April 24, 1921 in his hometown Bomoundi in
the present-day Bayelsa State of Nigeria, Dr. Okara
attended the famous Government College Umuahia in the 1930s and 40s where he got exposed to and
was inspired by the writings of Williams Shakespeare and others. He went on to attend Yaba
Higher College and Northwestern University, USA.


He has in his collections several back-to-back hit
poems and novels. 'Piano and Drums', 'You Laughed
and Laughed and Laughed', 'Once Upon a Time', 'The
Fisherman's Invocation' and 'The Voice' and
concatenation of several other linked short stories
and plays come highly recommended for post-
primary, undergraduate and graduate studies. The
vintage of his classics find expression in the
leitmotif: reminding Africans of their true identity as
expressed in culture, folklore and thought pattern in
a world of rapidly penetrating western culture.


An all-encompassing writer, his thoughts and works
appear to be greatly influenced by his immediate
environment. Okara is home and dry in all genres of
literature but conveys his message in the genre
which will be more expressive and relevant to the
thematic discuss.

http://saharareporters.com/2019/03/25/renowned-bayelsa-poet-gabriel-okara-dies-four-weeks-98th-birthday

Rip sir



Ftc

RIP

God has answered his prayers.... He will no longer experience BUHARI Next level..

RIP...

May his soul rest in perfect peace

rip sir

I remember his, the fisherman's invocation

Piano and Drum... RIP sir

A sage has finally gone home.

rest well sir. you've lived well

Rest in peace umuahian

RIP </3

A true icon. I read lots of his poems in my secondary School days.
Respect sir!
Rest in peace ☮️

In Unum Luceant.

RIP finally you have answered the call of the River Nun.

Writers do live long in Nigeria

bentwood85:
God has answered his prayers.... He will no longer experience BUHARI Next level..

RIP...

You have lost your mind completely!
No respect for the dead, because you feel you can login to internet and spew trash without questioning.

We mourn the passing of a great bard.
Gabriel Okara stunned the world with his first poem Piano and Drums in 1945. It stands out as a masterpiece of imagery and sophistication and effectively challenged the white notion of Africans as brutes scarcely capable of thought. It would hold fort as a shining example of african literature until 1958 when Chinua Achebe burst upon the scene with Things fall Apart. He followed up with Cry of the River Nun one of the poems in his defining work The Fishermans Invocation. He was truly a giant second to none. Along Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okigbo and E K Clark he reigned in triumvirate as undisputed master of Nigerian poetry of the early post colonial period.

In an age of angst and confusion, of ruinous disorder, when such abominations as Big Brother pass for entertainment and knowledge is sparse, it is fitting that we return to the noble past and sip of the insight and wisdom of the sages.

Rest in peace Gabriel Okara. You sailed the river well along all its course.

I present to you his most famous poems


Piano and Drums

When at break of day at a riverside
I hear the jungle drums telegraphing
the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw
like bleeding flesh, speaking of
primal youth and the beginning
I see the panther ready to pounce
the leopard snarling about to leap
and the hunters crouch with spears poised;

And my blood ripples, turns torrent,
topples the years and at once I’m
in my mother’s laps a suckling;
at once I’m walking simple
paths with no innovations,
rugged, fashioned with the _naked
warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts
in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.

Then I hear a wailing piano
solo speaking of complex ways in
tear-furrowed concerto;
of far away lands
and new horizons with
coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,
crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth
of its complexities, it ends in the middle
of a phrase at a daggerpoint.

And I lost in the morning mist
of an age at a riverside keep
wandering in the mystic rhythm
of jungle drums and the concerto.

- Gabriel Okara


The Call of the River Nun

I hear your call!
I hear it far away;
I hear it break the circle of these crouching hills.

I want to view your face again and feel your cold embrace;
or at your brim to set myself and inhale your breath;
or like the trees, to watch my mirrored self unfold and span my days with song from the lips of dawn.
I hear your lapping call!
I hear it coming through; invoking the ghost of a child listening, where river birds hail your silver-surfaced flow.

My river’s calling too!
Its ceaseless flow impels my found’ring canoe down its inevitable course.
And each dying year brings near the sea-bird call, the final call that stills the crested waves and breaks in two the curtain of silence of my upturned canoe.
O incomprehensible God!
Shall my pilot be my inborn stars to that final call to Thee.
O my river’s complex course?

- Gabriel Okara

RIP sir

Hmmm can never forget the Fisherman's Invocation. RIP sir

R.I.P Sir, i like his poems. My favourite is "there was a time".

RIP sir.

Gabriel Okara: Call of the river nun. I still remember that poem. Great poet. Rip

Another library burns to ashes...
Rest in peace

Gabriel Okara also wrote "The call of River Nun". The wrote the poem at Udi when he was nostalgia about River Nun. It was an interesting poem back in my secondary school days.

RIP to the legendary writer.

Rip sir. My very good friend. Good to know you left peacefully in your sleep.