The biography of Gabriel Okara.

Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara was born on April 21, 1921, in Bumodi, Nigeria, is Nigerian poet and novelist whose poems had been translated into several languages in the early 1960s.
Okara, who to a large extent, taught himself how to read and write, became a bookbinder after leaving school and soon began writing plays and features for radio. In 1953 his poem “The Call of the River Nun” won an award at the Nigerian Festival of Arts. Some of his poems were published in the influential periodical Black Orpheus. Along side these literary feats and prowess, around 1960, he was recognized as an accomplished author.

His poetry is based on a series of contrasts in which symbols are nicely and clearly balanced against each other. The need to reconcile the extremes of experience (life and death are common themes) preoccupies his verse, and a typical poem has a circular movement from everyday reality to a moment of joy and back to reality again. He has a flare in doing that.

More so, he incorporated African thought, religion, folklore, and imagery into both his verse and prose. His first novel, The Voice published in 1964, is a remarkable linguistic experiment in which Okara translated directly from the Ijo (Ijaw) language, imposing Ijo syntax onto English in order to give literal expression to African ideas and imagery. The novel creates a symbolic landscape in which the forces of traditional African culture and Western materialism contend. Its tragic hero, Okolo, is both an individual and a universal figure, and the ephemeral “it” that he is searching for could represent any number of transcendent moral values. Okara’s skilled ability to portrayal the inner tensions of his hero distinguished him from many other Nigerian novelists.

In the 1960s, Okara worked in civil service. From 1972 to 1980 he was director of the Rivers State Publishing House in Port Harcourt. His later work includes a collection of poems, The Fisherman’s Invocation (1978), and two books for children, Little Snake and Little Frog (1981) and An Adventure to Juju Island (1992).

TO KNOW MORE ABOUT GABRIEL OKARA, YOU CAN SEARCH FOR THE FOLLOWING DETAILS