J P Clark has passed away on October 13, 2020.
John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo was born on April, 1935.
Born in Kiagbodo, Nigeria, to an Ijaw father and Urhobo mother, Clark received his early education at the Native Authority School, Okrika (Ofinibenya-Ama), in Burutu LGA (then Western Ijaw) 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
Professional Information
He was a Nigerian poet and playwright, who has also published as J. P. Clark and John Pepper Clark.
Clark was most noted for his poetry, including:
Poems (Mbari, 1961), a group of 40 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 74 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 Clark’s 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.
Critics have noted three main stages in Clark’s poetic career: the apprenticeship stage of trial and experimentation, exemplified by such juvenilia as “Darkness and Light” and “Iddo Bridge”; the imitative stage, in which he appropriates such Western poetic conventions as the couplet measure and the sonnet sequence, exemplified in such lyrics as “To a Fallen Soldier” and “Of Faith”; and the individualized stage, in which he attains the maturity and originality of form of such poems as “Night Rain”, “Out of the Tower”, and “Song”.
Throughout his work, certain themes recur:
Violence and protest, as in Casualties;
Institutional corruption, as in State of the Union;
The beauty of nature and the landscape, as in A Reed in the Tide;
European colonialism as in, for example, “Ivbie” in the Poems collection;
The inhumanity of the human race as in Mandela and Other Poems.
Clark frequently dealt with these themes through a complex interweaving of indigenous African imagery and that of the Western literary tradition.
Surviving Families
He is survived by his wife and his kids.
Tributes
World Famous Author And Poet, J P Clark DiesCityNews Nigeria reports that renowned author and poet, J P Clark has passed away.
According to a statement released by the family, the world famous author passed away in his sleep.
Prof. J. P. Clark has paddled on to the great… pic.twitter.com/yGZtP3EmyQ
— ireportnews (@ireportnews1) October 13, 2020
Cause of Death
His cause of death is still unknown at the moment, we will update you as soon as we have the full details about his death.His death was announced on 13 October 2020
Funeral Service & GoFundme
Funeral services will be made known as soon as it is being updated. Memorial donations may be made in Clark’s name through the GoFundme page.
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