John Pepper Clark

A poet and playwright, John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo was born 6th of April 1935. The old professor, a Nigerian of creative repute is still alive. A unique writer, who published most of his work as J. P. Clark, is a son of the Niger Delta. He is an Ijaw son who was born in Kiagbodo, a major component of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

Clark received his early education at the Native Administration School and the prestigious Government College in Ughelli, and his BA degree in English at the University of Ibadan, where he edited various magazines, including the Beacon and The Horn. Upon graduation from Ibadan in 1960, he worked as an information officer in the Ministry of Information, in the old Western Region of Nigeria, as features editor of the Daily Express, and as a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan. He served for several years as a professor of English at the University of Lagos, a position from which he retired in 1980. While at the University of Lagos he was co-editor of the literary magazine Black Orpheus.
In 1982, along with his wife Ebun Odutola (a professor and former director of the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Lagos), he founded the PEC Repertory Theatre in Lagos.

This son of the Niger Delta is one of the most creative writers in Africa. So good a son that the global community calls him their own, however, he is first a Niger Delta. Clark is a widely travelled man, since his retirement, he has held visiting professorial appointments at several institutions of higher learning, including Yale and Wesleyan University in the United States.

J. P. Clark is most noted for his poetry, including:

• Poems (Mbari, 1961), a group of forty lyrics that treat heterogeneous themes;
• A Reed in the Tide (Longmans, 1965), occasional poems that focus on the Clark's indigenous African background and his travel experience in America and other places;
• Casualties: Poems 1966-68 (USA: Africana Publishing Corporation, 1970), which illustrate the horrendous events of the Nigeria-Biafra war;
• A Decade of Tongues (Longmans, Drumbeat series, 1981), a collection of seventy-four poems, all of which apart from "Epilogue to Casualties" (dedicated to Michael Echeruo) were previously published in earlier volumes;
• State of the Union (1981), which highlights his apprehension concerning the sociopolitical events in Nigeria as a developing nation;
• Mandela and Other Poems (1988), which deals with the perennial problem of aging and death.

And if you ever read his Drama you would realised from a single material that Clark is some kind of a revolutionist who argued on the side of culture and the female gender.

Clark's dramatic work includes Song of a Goat (1961), a tragedy cast in the Greek classical mode in which the impotence of Zifa, the protagonist, causes his wife Ebiere and his brother Tonye to indulge in an illicit love relationship that results in suicide. This was followed by a sequel, The Masquerade (1964), in which Dibiri's rage culminates in the death of his suitor Tufa. Other works include:

• The Raft (1964), in which four men drift helplessly down the Niger River aboard a log raft, a symbolic story of the state of the Niger Delta region;
• Ozidi (1966), an epic drama rooted in Ijaw saga;
• The Boat (1981), a prose drama that documents Ngbilebiri history.

Although his plays have been criticized for leaning too much on the Greek classical mode (especially the early ones), for their thinness of structure and for unrealistic stage devices (such as the disintegration of the raft on the stage in The Raft), his defenders argue that they challenge and engage the audience with their poetic quality and their uniting of the foreign and the local through graphic imagery.

As one of Africa's pre-eminent and distinguished authors, he has, since his retirement, continued to play an active role in literary affairs, a role for which he is increasingly gaining international recognition. In 1991, for example, he received the Nigerian National Merit Award for literary excellence and saw publication, by Howard University, of his two definitive volumes, The Ozidi Saga and Collected Plays and Poems 1958-1988.

On 6 December 2011, to honour the life and career of Professor John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo, a celebration was held at Lagos Motor Boat Club, Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, for the publication of J. P. Clark: A Voyage, The definitive biography of the main animating force of African poetry, written by playwright Femi Osofisan. The launch was attended by "what could be described as the who-is-who in the literary community".

Professor J. P. Clark-Bekederemo is not just a creative African but foremost among the heroes deserve to be celebrated in the Niger Delta Region, a place where many consider as the conflict zone. While we celebrate those who died as martyr for the region we must as well celebrate those who promote the arsenal of raw creativity naturally horded in the Niger Delta region of the burning gold.

No doubt, John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo has inspired countless writers in Africa today. I thought he was a white man at first, until I get to study his materials. He did inspire me to write, and with this I hope he inspire every young African, Niger Delta to reach out for their dreams.