Legendary Literary Icon Drops His Pen Amidst Tears Of Commendations!

NJOKU MACDONALD OBINNA

The renaissance nay agitation and tension witnessed in the cyber space and across the country by Nigerians especially, among the youths in their unanimous resolve to #ENDSARSNOW almost made a number of us; literature students, to forget that one of our mentors and founding fathers of contemporary African literature, J.P. Clark, dropped his pen yesterday, took a literary bow and joined his forbearers.

Out of his many excellent works, the most prominent that sold him out to the world was his poem, Night Rain; which he published at the peak of his literary career. The poem is a simple straightforward narration with descriptive embellishment of a nocturnal rainstorm in a tropical African locality.

In the said poem, J.P. Clark exploited a descriptive technique to communicate his subject matter; wrote in coherent fast moving short lines as if depicting that nocturnal precipitation. Like some of his best poems, Night Rain achieved its poetic success through prosaic rhythm. Yes, as a literature student, it was one of my most favourite poems and I made a good account of it during my West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE).

Reminiscing my early school days at the Holy Ghost College (Recta Sapere) Owerri, Imo State, as a JSS 1 student, Literature as a subject was introduced to us. And in J.P Clark’s poems, I began to appreciate literary studies; embedded in the study of his written works of imagination, of which poetry, drama and narrative fiction constitute most familiar genres.

Prof. JP Clark was a literary icon and an idol to most of us. His technical competence in the exploitation of words, construction of English coinages, expression and management of ideas and imagery in his poems, sold him out as one of the literary giants of all times; in the class of Prof. Wole Soyinka and late Prof. Chinua Achebe.

Popularly known as J.P. Clark, Prof. John Pepper Clark was born in 1935 at Kaigbodo in the Ijaw Speaking area of Delta State, Nigeria.

He had his early education at Government College, Ugheli. He later attended the University of Ibadan where he graduated with honours in Arts with special interest in English Literature.

As a university student, he developed keen interest in poetry and became the editor of a poetry magazine -The Horn.

To his credit, the literary icon wrote many poems and a few plays. His poetry achieves artistry through vivid descriptive ability , the way in which he built ideas and imagery from his local culture and his seamless fusion of the Western tradition to which he was academically exposed and the cultural heritage of his birth as a true Ijaw man , and African statesman in the literary world.

A foremost Poet, a respected egghead in the Ivory Tower, Prof. J.P. Clark , until his glorious demise, was a Professor of English at the University of Lagos, from where he retired.

He will be fondly missed within the academic community and among many scholars and students of literature that he had tutored, mentored and influenced through his works.

Rest on, African literary giant!

• Njoku MacDonald Obinna writes in from the NDDC Headquarters, Olu Obasanjo Road, GRA, Garden City, Port Harcourt, Rivers State.