Date: 26 September 2011
Internationally acclaimed literary figures Chinua Achebe, Gabriel Okara, and Brenda Marie Osbey will discuss "Voice and Memory in the Poetic Imagination" on Monday, September 26, 2011 at 4 p.m. in the George Houston Bass Performing Arts Space, Churchill House, 155 Angell St. It is free and open to the public and also available to view in a live Webcast.
Considered icons of African literature, Achebe and Okara have never before shared a stage for a public conversation and readings from their works. Nigerian poet and novelist Okara, recipient of the 1979 Commonwealth Poetry Prize, is known as the first significant English-language African poet. He is believed to be the oldest living English language writer in Africa. Achebe, best known for Things Fall Apart (1958) and Collected Poems (2004), is the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and professor of Africana studies at Brown. Osbey, the 2005-07 poet laureate of Louisiana and author of the award-winning All Saints: New and Collected Poems (1997), is currently a distinguished visiting professor of Africana studies at Brown. The conversation will be moderated by author Nduka Otiono, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Africana Studies.
The conversation will include a discussion about Achebe, Okara, and Osbey’s poetry and artistic visions, the role of poetry and the arts in society, and the ways in which poetry can create opportunities for change. The dialogue is the first in the 2011-12 Conversations in Africana Writing series, organized by the Department of Africana Studies.
Via: news.brown.edu