http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
Some initial notes and photographs in response to the "Christopher
Okigbo International Conference" Harvard and UMass Boston, September 19 -
23, 2007. Okigbo, a poet of the generation of Wole Soyinka and Chinua
Achebe was killed in 1967, a soldier, in the first months of the
Biafran/Nigeria Civil War. Up to just prior to the War, I was a lecturer, and
coordinator of the campus poetry group at the University of Nigeria,
Nssuka, the intellectual seat of what became Biafra, as well as home to
the opposition to the separaton. As part of the Conference, organized
by Chukwuma Azuonye - a former student and research fellow at Harvard's
Du Bois Institute - I was invited to participate and read in a reunion
of my former students, colleagues and contemporary younger poets. Let
alone my personal experience, in the reflective context of the diaspora
of Nigerian writers and intellectuals, the whole event was quite
incredible. Excerpt:
....The Conference, its historical moment, reconnected many of
currents that produced the initial war - the drive toward Biafra’s
succession, and the forces of reconciliation. Soyinka, a Yoruba, though he was
imprisoned by both sides - and a ferverent opponent of military rule,
tirelessly worked for a Federalist form of reconciliation, inclusive of
the Ibo, and inclusive of the minority tribes within Biafra, many of
whom opposed the war. Achebe, an Ibo, and Biafran supporter, despaired of
any rapprochement. Both writers were school mates and close friends of
Okigbo. To have Achebe and Soyinka seated together on a public panel,
reflecting on the life, work and decisions of the poet to support Biafra
felt like a monumental moment, practically heart breaking in its
emotional intensity. You could have cut the air with a knife...
Stephen Vincent
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
var callCount = 0; function rmvScroll( msg ) { if ( ++callCount > 10 ) { msg.style.visibility = "visible"; } if ( callCount msg.clientHeight ) { newHeight = msg.scrollHeight + delta; } delta = msg.offsetWidth - msg.clientWidth; delta = ( isNaN( delta )? 1 : delta + 1 ); if ( msg.scrollWidth > msg.clientWidth ) { newWidth = msg.scrollWidth + delta; } msg.style.overflow = "visible"; msg.style.visibility = "visible"; if ( newWidth > 0 || newHeight > 0 ) { var ssxyzzy = document.getElementById( "ssxyzzy" ); var cssAttribs = ['#' + msg.id + '{']; if ( newWidth > 0 ) cssAttribs.push( 'width:' + newWidth + 'px;' ); if ( newHeight > 0 ) cssAttribs.push( ' height:' + newHeight + 'px;' ); cssAttribs.push( '}' ); try { ssxyzzy.sheet.deleteRule( 0 ); ssxyzzy.sheet.insertRule( cssAttribs.join(""), 0 ); } catch( e ){} } } function imgsDone( msg ) // for Firefox, we need to scan for images that haven't set their width yet { var imgList
= msg.getElementsByTagName( "IMG" ); var len = ((imgList == null)? 0 : imgList.length); for ( var i = 0; i [input] [input] [input] [input] [input] [input] [input] [input] Delete Reply Forward Spam Move...
Previou
