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November 25, 2014
| By Staff Correspondent
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The lyrical poet, teacher, scholar, public intellectual, humanist and citizen of the world hails from Ikere-Ekiti.
Wikipedia states : "Niyi Osundare (born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria) is a prolific poet, dramatist and literary critic. He gained degrees at the University of Ibadan (BA), the University of Leeds (MA) and York University, Canada (PhD, 1979). Previously professor (from 1989) and Head of English (1993–97) at the University of Ibadan, he became professor of English at the University of New Orleans in 1997. Niyi has a wife, Kemi, and three children, two girls and a son who still lives in Nigeria. His deaf daughter is the real reason Niyi settled in the United States. She could not go to school in Nigeria so they found a school in the U.S. for her. They moved with her so Niyi and Kemi could be closer to her.
He has always been a vehement champion of the right to free speech and is a strong believer in the power of words, saying, "to utter is to alter". Osundare is renowned for his commitment to socially relevant art and artistic activism and has written several open letters to the former President of Nigeria (Olusegun Obasanjo), whom Osundare has often publicly criticised.
Osundare believes that there is no choice for the African poet but to be political."
Publications include:
Songs from the Marketplace (1983)[2]
Village Voices (1984)
The Eye of the Earth (1986, winner of a Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the poetry prize of the Association of Nigerian Authors)
Moonsongs (1988)
Songs of the Season (1999)
Waiting Laughters (1990, winner of the Noma Award)
Selected Poems (1992)
Midlife (1993)
Thread in the Loom: Essays on African Literature and Culture (2002)
The Word is an Egg (2002)
The State Visit (2002, play)
Pages from the Book of the Sun: New and Selected Poems (2002)
Early Birds (2004)
Two Plays (2005)
The Emerging Perspectives on Niyi Osundare (2003)
Not My Business (2005)
Tender Moments:Love Poems (2006)
The Chairman, Governing Board of the Nigerian Merit Award (NNMA), Prof. Etim Essien, who disclosed this in Abuja at a press conference to announce the recipient of the 2014 Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) award, Essien said: "Prof. Niyi Osundare who through outstanding scholarship, researches and service to humanity in the field of humanities has successfully carved his name in gold in the hearts of people of this nation and many nations of the world.
"Osundare, a poet, dramatist and an essayist, has been Nigeria's noted nature poet of English language expression, and an accessible serious poet who sets out to engage the reader, and has made most significant contribution to the Nigerian poetic English diction."
The Board Chairman said that President Goodluck Jonathan at the Council Chambers, Presidential Villa, would decorate Prof. Osundare with the NNOM award on December 4.
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