Content area
Full Text
Niyi Osundare was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria. He is a poel, dramatist, essayist, critic, and media columnist who has published over ten volumes of poetry, two books of selected poems, four plays, a book of essays, and numerous articles. He has won numerous prizes, among them the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1986; the Noma Award, Africa's most prestigious book award; and the Fonlon/ Nichols Award for literary excellence and contribution to human rights in Africa. A survivor of Hurricane Kairina in 2005, he has since returned to the University of New Orleans, where he currently teaches literature and creative writing.
Osundare's numerous travels have influenced him, but it is Nigeria, with its linguistic and cultural diversity, that has most shaped his writing. In his poetry, Osundare draws from the oral tradition of Yoruba, one of the three largest ethnic groups of Nigeria. Because the Yoruba oral tradition is a shared community experience. Osundare emphasizes drama and performance in his own poetry, often reading aloud with audience participation. Though Yoruba is not endangered, the bulk of its literature - like most endangered languages in Africa and elsewhere - is oral. Osundare's eloquent discussion of how that oral tradition has affected his written poetry provides an insightful first-person account of the power of oral literature. We hope it will serve as a glimpse of what speakers and listeners of endangered stories from around the world might also experience.
The Yoruba culture has a significant oral tradition. How were you introduced to that tradition, and how does that tradition influence your writing?
Without any doubt, Yoruba/Af'rican oral tradition has a strong influence on my works. It is for me both a source and an inspiration. I was not really "introduced" to Yoruba culture; I was born into it, and 1 grew up in it. Both my parents were artistically oriented. Though my father was a farmer, he was also a drummer, singer, and song-composer. My mother was a cloth-weaver, a clothdyer, «nid a singer. From the professions of both parents, I developed a sense of rhythm and a sense of patterns and proportion pretty early. Beyond the immediate family circle was the larger Yoruba community...