Osundare's poem for 2012 London Olympics

Osundare

Nigeria’s multiple award-winning poet and US-based Distinguished Professor of English, Niyi Osundare, is one of the poets whose literary genius will be honoured as part of a special broadcast series by the British Broadcasting Service (BBC) to celebrate the hosting of the 2012 Olympics by the City of London, Empowered Newswire reports

The broadcast series, tagged “The Written Word”, which is a joint venture between the BBC and Creative Scotland, a Scottish organization, will include a poems selected from each of the 205 countries which will be competing at this year’s Olympics. 

Osundare’s poem, “Raindrum”, which was published in Selected Poems (Heinemann, 1992) will be broadcast in English and in Yoruba. The Yoruba version, translated by the author himself, is entitled “Gbedu Ojo”. All the selected poems from the other 204 competing countries will also be broadcast in their native tongues.

The selected poems from around the world were not entered in any competition by the poets. They were all chosen by the organizers of the event, confirming the international recognition and honour that the selections entail. 

According to the letter announcing this selection to the former University of Ibadan professor of English Language, the broadcast of the “Raindrum” across BBC’s Public Services “will include, but not limited to, the poem text being made available online, as audio downloads, and supported with visual content where required. In addition, the texts and translations of the poems may be reproduced as postcards or posters…”

The organisers added that the project, which will include Osundare’s poem, “is educational in the widest sense”, while its “online resources will ensure that we leave a legacy of truly global scope.” 

Besides, the organizers states that they regard the broadcast of the poets from 205 countries of the world during and beyond the period of the London Olympics as a “vast and ambitious project” which will provide an “opportunity to bond poetry from many nations into the lives of people who might not ordinarily be interested in it, giving them a reason to enjoy and explore a great art form.”

Osundare, former Head of Department of English Language at the University of Ibadan, is a playwright, linguist, critic, essayist, media columnist and public intellectual. He has published over 15 books of poetry, including Songs of the Marketplace, The Eye of the Earth, Songs of the Season, and Waiting Laughters, two books of selected poems, four plays, two books of essays and numerous scholarly works and reviews. 

His latest work, City Without a People: The Katrina Poems (2011), based on personal and collective experiences during the Hurricane Katrina devastations in New Orleans, United States, where he teaches, has been gathering rave reviews around the world. 

Osundare has won numerous prizes including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Noma Award, the Tchicaya U Tam’si Award for African Poetry, the Fonlon/Nichols Award for “excellence in literary creativity combined with significant contributions to Human Rights in Africa” and the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize. 

A critic lauded Osundare’s poetry for the “synthesis of Western and African/Yoruba oral literary techniques” and the “adaptation of local language and traditional speech pattern”, while another, Megan Gribble, writing on Osundare poems on the rain, states that the poet “presents rain as a living thing that interacts with and affects the rest of the world around it.”

The author of The Word Is an Egg has also been praised for his socially-sensitive and “people-centred” poetry. In response to this, Osundare stated that “When you have a country and a continent and a world where … politics is being used to entrench poverty and enrich a few, then problems are bound to [a]rise. Poetry has become a tool for setting things right, for praising virtue… Genuine poetry raises political songs; political songs directly and indirectly. It tells kings about the corpses which line their way to the throne. It tells the rich ones the skulls in their cupboards.”

The acclaimed lyricist who approaches poetry as performance has performed his poems in many parts of the world. Also, his poetry has been translated into many languages including French, Italian, Slovenian, Czech, Spanish, Korean, Arabic and Dutch. He has been a recipient of honorary doctorates from the Universite de Toulouse-le Mirail in France and Franklin Pierce College in Rindge New Hampshire, USA.