Renowned Nigerian poet and playwright, Prof. John Pepper Clark, popularly known as J.P. Clark died on Tuesday at the age of 86.
A statement from the family signed by Prof. C. C. Clark and Mr.
Ilaye Clark on behalf of the family said: “The Clark-Fuludu
Bekederemo family of Kiagbodo Town, Delta State, wishes to announce that
Emeritus Professor of Literature and Renowned Writer, Prof. John Pepper Clark,
has finally dropped his pen in the early hours of today, Tuesday, 13 October
2020.
“Prof. J. P. Clark has paddled on to the great beyond in comfort of his wife,
children and siblings, around him.
“The family appreciates your prayers at this time.”
Clark was born on 6th of December 1933 in Kiagbodo to an Ijaw father and Urhobo
mother, Delta State.
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.
In 1982, along with his wife Ebun Odutola (a professor and
former director of the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Lagos),
he founded the PEC Repertory Theatre in Lagos.
A widely travelled man, Clark had, since his retirement, held visiting
professorial appointments at several institutions of higher learning, including
Yale and Wesleyan University in the United States.
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 and 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;
Others are: State of the Union (1981), which highlights Clark’s
apprehension concerning the socio-political events in Nigeria as a developing
nation and Mandela and Other Poems (1988), which dealt with the
perennial problem of aging and death.
Clark’s dramatic work included Song of a Goat – premiered at
the Mbari Club in 1961, a tragedy cast in the Greek
classical mode in which the impotence of Zifa, the protagonist,
causes his wife Ebiere and his brother Tonye to indulge in an illicit love
relationship that resulted in suicide. This play was followed by a
sequel, The Masquerade (1964), in which Dibiri’s rage culminates in
the death of his suitor Tufa.
Other works include: The Raft (1964), in which four men drifted helplessly down the Niger aboard a log raft; Ozidi (1966), a transcription of a performance of an epic drama of the Ijaw people and The Boat (1981), a prose drama that documents Ngbilebiri history.
-With assistance from Wikipedia