This book explores the emergence of the award-winning Niyi Osundare, a modern Nigerian poet. It examines how Osundare started in Ikere-Ekiti as a “farmer-born, peasant-bred” oral singer to becoming one of the world’s most celebrated African poets. Osundare has won the Association of Nigerian Authors Prize, the Commonwealth Poetry Award, the Japanese sponsored Noma Award, and the Folon-Nichols award. He also accepted a Honoris Causa of the prestigious Université de Toulouse le Mirial in France.

This book presents a unique collection of essays on Osundare’s work by renowned scholars around the world. The preface is written by Abiola Irele and the afterword by Biodun Jeyifo. Among the other contributors are Eldred Durosimi Jones, Stephen Arnold, Doug Killam, Bernth Lindfors, Donald Burness, S. Louisa Wei, John Kinsella, Jane Bryce, Tejumola Olaniyan, Tayo Olafioye, Tanure Ojaide, Femi Oyebode, Titi Adepitan, Omoniyi Afolabi, Adewunmi Adesokan, and Sunday Enesi Ododo.

“This is a terrific comprehensive book by a wide array of insightful scholars, on one of our most politically committed, most thematically cosmopolitan, and most technically innovative poets.”

-Tejumola Olaniyan
University of Wisconsin-Madison

“Niyi Osundare is universally acclaimed as one of Africa's best poets. His sense of poetic poise, the vitality of his language, and the sheer fecundity of his inspirations from both African and Western literary sources is matched by few poets writing today. It is a timely compendium and one that will set the parameters for the discussion of Osundare for a long time to come.”

-Ato Quayson
University of Cambridge

“This volume shows that politics and literature are inseparable - by design and by implication. Language, place, and culture are dynamically interlinked in a series of textual and 'verbal' investigations reaching into the very substance of the poetic impulse. A significant and even vital book.”

-John Kinsella
Edith Cowan University, Australia

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABDUL-RASHEED NA'ALLAH is a poet and scholar. He is also the author of Almajiri: A New African Poetry (AWP 2001) and editor of Ogoni's Agonies: Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Crisis in Nigeria (AWP 1998).

CATEGORY
Literary Criticism/AFRICA