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Ogaga Ifowodo

The Böll Haus Welcome

  • 1 A Waterscape | Translations: de
  • 2 XVIII (from “Odi”) | Translations: de
  • 3 XX (from “Odi”)
  • 4 XXXVIII (from “Ogoni”)
  • 5 XLV (from “The Pipes War”) | Translations: de
  • 6 The Agonist
  • 7 The Error of His Death
  • 8 The Böll Haus Welcome
  • 9 Madiba (sonnet 13)
  • 10 Madiba (sonnet 14)
  • 11 Madiba (sonnet 15)
  • 12 Madiba (sonnet 16)
  • 13 For Art’s Sake
  • 14 Homeland
  • 15 The Earth You Walked to Me
Language: english
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The Böll Haus Welcome

I was expected. The philharmonic
orchestra struck up as the arched gate
wrapped in summer’s mesh of green, loosed its ribbons,
dropped four leaves, one for each month of my stay,

to mark the first footprint. I stamped my foot
to churn the black soil of my sole into
the German sand on the cobbled frontyard.
I was expected  –  a tenor crescendo

drowned out the birds’ animated giggles
as they flew from stem to stem, tree to tree,
stretching passion to the season’s last spark
before the freeze of winter’s creeping hand.

Oh such tenors! The sound of music came
from a corner of the lawn. I drew close
to the pit, the number at counterpoint,
to see the Soprano too shy to sing:

Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen? to salute
Sarastro and Papagena, surely
piping through flutes of floating lily, the
anxieties of love approaching blindfold.

I drew closer. And the African sun
I carry with me warmed them, drove away
what bit of cold lurked still as they clambered
up the hidden baton, rumbling roofs and sky

to make this reception fit tribute
to the land of eternal summer  –
for I was expected  –  before the bullfrogs
bowed and ducked behind the curtain of lilies.

© Ogaga Ifowodo
Audio production: 2010 Literaturwerkstatt Berlin

Translations:

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8 / 15
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(Madiba (sonnet 13))   
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Ogaga Ifowodo

photo © private
* 30.11.1965, Nigeria
lives in: , United States

Ogaga Ifowodo, poet and writer, studied law at the University of Benin and worked for eight years as a rights activist with Nigeria’s premier non-governmental rights group, the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO).

Ogaga Ifowodo has published three collections of poems: Homeland and Other Poems, Madiba and The Oil Lamp.

His poems have been translated into German, Dutch and Romanian and have been widely published in anthologies and magazines, including Voices from all Over: Poems with Notes and Activities (Oxford, 2006), Step Into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, (John Wiley, 2000), The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry International, English in Africa, The Massachusetts Review, among others.

 photo © private
Between 1997 and 1998, he was held under preventive detention by the military regime of General Sani Abacha: a memoir of his prison experience, excerpts from which have been featured in Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing (Heinemann), New Writing 14 (Granta), and at www.african-writing.com is in progress.

With the story, The Treasonable Parot, he recently made his prose fiction debut in AGNI magazine. Ifowodo has been a regular contributor to the op-ed pages of The Guardian of Lagos and other major Nigerian newspapers.

He is a recipient of the PEN USA Barbara Goldsmith Freedom-to-Write Award (1998) and of the Poets of All Nations (Netherlands) Free Word. An honorary member of the PEN centres of the USA, Canada and Germany, he is also a fellow of the Iowa Writing Program.

Trained originally as a lawyer, Ifowodo received a Master of Fine Art and a Ph.D from Cornell University in the USA where he currently teaches poetry and literature at Texas State University.

Publications
  • Homeland & Other Poems

    1998

  • Madiba

    2003

  • The Oil Lamp

    2005

  • A Good Mourning

    Lagos: Parresia Books, 2017

Prizes
  • 1993 Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) poetry prize

  • 2003 ANA/Cadbury poetry prize

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