CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO

     

       

Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) was an early Nigerian poet, now widely acknowledged as the outstanding post-colonial English-language African poet; and one of the major modernist writers of the twentieth

century. He died prematurely during the Nigerian Civil war. As a youth Okigbo felt a special affinity to his maternal grandfather, a priest of Idoto, an Igbo deity personified in the river of the same name that flowed through his village. Later in life, Okigbo came to believe that his grandfather's soul was reincarnated in him, and the "water goddess" figures prominently in his fecund poetry . Okigbo studied at the famous University College in Ibadan, graduating ultimately in Classics. He later helped to found the African Authors Association. He was also West African Representative of Cambridge University Press at Ibadan. . His published books (some posthumously) are  Heavensgate (1962)  Limits (1964) Labyrinths (1971), 

Collected poems (1986), and Crossroads (2008).

Studies:

The trial of Christopher Okigbo by Ali AlʼAmin Mazrui 

Christopher Okigbo: creative rhetoric by Sunday Ogbonna Anozie 

Critical perspectives on Christopher Okigbo 

Critical essays on Christopher Okigbo 

Christopher Okigbo, 1930-67 : thirsting for sunlight by Obi Nwakanma 

Kamau Brathwaite and Christopher Okigbo : art, politics, and the music of ritual by Curwen Best 

Hybridity and Christopher Okigbo's poetry by Christopher W. N Kirunda 

Nationalism in Okigbo's poetry by Dubem Okafor 

Two African Prodigals : Senghor and Okigbo by Jonathan Ngate 

Folk tradition in Okigbo's poetry by Emma Ngumoha