ISBN 9780979085895
Pages 110
Dimensions 216 x 140 mm
Published 2013
Publisher African Heritage Press, Nigeria
Format Paperback

Love Gifts

by Tanure Ojaide

Love Gifts is a love sequence: the poetic rendering of the relationship between the minstrel and his muse over a long period. The poet uses the relationship of the two personages to investigate the human condition; hence the poems deal with dreams, desires, frustrations, hopes, contentment, and seeking meaning in life. The poetic canvas links the two figures to other relationships and happenings of their time in an all-embracing manner. In a way, minstrel and muse, lovers, are in these "songs" sharing a unique relationship with readers as they affirm their humanity and tell the complicated passage they navigate hourly and daily as members of a particular society. The relationship develops from the inexperience of neophytes, unsteady in their ways, to the stage of adepts who are sure of themselves and their "rites." The poems are thus a sort of courtship sequence.

Book Preview
Paperback
£23.10
eBook
£23.10

About the Author

Tanure Ojaide

A renowned poet, Tanure 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), twice the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for Poetry (1988 and 1997), and thrice the Association of Nigerian Authors' Poetry Prize (1988, 1994 and 2004. In 2016 Ojaide was awarded the the prestigious Fonlon-Nichols Award at the 42nd annual African Literature Association (ALA) conference in Atlanta.

For Tanure Ojaide, "the creative writer is never an airplant, but someone who is grounded in some specific place. It is difficult to talk of many writers without their identification with place. Every writer's roots are very important in understanding his or her work." He has read from his poetry in different fora in Africa, Britain, Canada, Israel, Mexico, The Netherlands, and the United States. Some of his poems have been translated into Chinese, Dutch, Spanish and French. He is currently the Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Visit Tanure Ojaide's website here: http://www.tanureojaide.com/

Related Books