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The Poetry of Wole Soyinka

Tanure Ojaide

The Nobel Laureate's reputation as a dramatist tends to cloud his poetic achievement, and in modern African literature, poetry lives in the shadow of fiction. The criticism of Soyinka's poetry has so far centred on his themes of individuality and death, his imagery, and on the controversy over his authenticity, obscurity and difficulty. Here, in a new approach, an academic himself and one of the leading younger generation of African poets, discusses critically the voice and viewpoint of the poet with the object of establishing Soyinka's persona. The book covers the personality and world view of the man, as revealed in his poetry.

ISBN 9789780230067 | 152 pages | 229 x 152 mm | 1994 | Malthouse Press, Nigeria | Paperback

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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.

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/

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