Gabriel Okara: Less acclaimed father of modernist African literature
The Call of the River Nun
Tnovel The Voice was outstanding as experimental and innovative in 1964, a still very early period in the rise of African literature in the western world. Okara has said he was writing an English which contained the Ijaw /Ijo /Ibo syntax, that his thought processes were in his native language which he then wrote in English. He did not think in English and then write, and that shaped the language of the novel. The Voice is therefore steeped in the indigenous traditions of the Ibo (Ijaw/ Ijo) of Nigeria in form and style.
This is not far removed from the work of Amos Tutuola, another early innovator in the founding of Nigerian literature in English. Tutuola began writing in this way in 1946 and produced the famous novel The Palm Wine Drinkard. This is not only steeped in Yoruba mythology, folklore and traditions, but uses a similar language governed by Yoruba syntax and thought structures. That novel advanced and established African literature in English. So did The Voice many years later.
In 1953, Okara gained recognition when he won the Poetry Prize at the Nigerian Festival of Arts for the poem “The Call of the River Nun”. It was the rise of modernist poetry in Africa as well as literature in English. It is a significant work for the poet and connects with the poetry that was to follow as the literature advanced. he River Nun is a branch of the River Niger in the amazing Niger Delta into which the river flows in the Rivers State of south-east Nigeria. According to Okara it is unpolluted, unlike other branches in the delta where there is oil exploration. He was born in the delta region and grew up close to the rivers. The Nun held special significance for him and he felt his life was attached to it, as is indicated in the poem. He worships it with almost god-like devotion.
It is modernist verse with what appears to be deep spiritual attachment among the indigenous landscape, the native country and the poet. Okara said, “I grew up . . . on the river banks where water was everything to us. We used it . . . travelling from place to place. All that experience of rivers . . . inspired me into writing.” And it was that writing which became more spiritually involved in the traditions of the land that inspired the rise of a poetry that expressed the African communities. It was that writing that led the way for the many others who contributed to the development of modern African literature.
Interestingly, one disciple of Okara is himself a writer in Nigeria and like Okara was outside of the university men and his highly experimental work received little attention. He is Jamaican-born Lindsay Barrett, famous for the intriguingly poetic experimental novel Song for Mumu (1953).