THE ALS BOOK JAM
DATE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2017
TIME: 7:00PM
VENUE: SANDRALIA HOTEL (1, SOLOMON LAR WAY, JABI, ABUJA)
Ogaga Ifowodo is a lawyer, poet, columnist and rights activist. He obtained his LL.B from the University of Benin and was called to the bar in 1991. After a decade of working in Nigeria’s premier human rights Non-governmental organisation, the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), he proceeded to the United States in 2001 to indulge his passion for writing and literature.
He obtained a Master of Fine Art (MFA), an MA and a Ph.D from the Ivy-league Cornell University, New York. He taught at Texas State University until 2014 when he returned home. He has published three prize-winning books of poetry: Homeland and Other Poems (winner of the 1993 ANA poetry prize); Madiba (winner of the 2003 ANA/Cadbury poetry prize); and The Oil Lamp (winner of the 2005 ANA/Gabriel Okara poetry prize. A Good Mourning, his fourth collection, was published in 2016; it includes his poetic meditations on the June 12, 1993 electoral and political crisis in which he was a frontline participant, leading to his detention under the regime of General Abacha—memoirs of his prison experience are in progress.
His poems have been widely published in several anthologies and literary journals across the world, including Voices from all Over: Poems with Notes and Activities, The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry International, The Massachusetts Review, Crazyhorse, The Dalhousie Review, Atlanta Review, Mantis, Drumvoices Revue, and Migrations (an Afro-Italian anthology selected by Wole Soyinka for the Lagos Black Heritage Festival).
Ifowodo was named recipient of the PEN USA Barbara Goldsmith Freedom-to-Write Award and of the Poets of All Nations (Netherlands) “Free Word” Award. He is an honorary member of the PEN centres of the USA, Canada and Germany and a fellow of the Iowa Writing Programme. Since 1988 when he made his debut in the op-ed pages of The Guardian, Ogaga Ifowodo has maintained a steady presence in the newspapers and magazines. In 2012, he began writing a fortnightly column under the caption “For Crying Out LOUD!” for Vanguard newspaper. His essays are also published by the popular online platforms SaharaReporters, Premium Times and Nigeria Village Square. He is currently on a leave of absence from writing the column but intends to publish a selection of his essays very soon.
In 2014, Ifowodo returned from his fourteen-year-stay in the United States. He immediately declared his intention to enter public service and be more directly involved in bringing about the change that the masses of the people pine for. He sought the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for a seat in the House of Representatives. He lost in the primary election, thus confirming British poet P. B. Shelley’s claim that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world!
Broadcast by KAREYI
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