Poetry
Limits
Christopher Okigbo · 1964
Synopsis
Twelve numbered poems in two sequences, Siren Limits and Fragments out of the Deluge, meant to be read in one sitting. The first follows a poet walking towards what he calls his voice, and stumbling on what separates him from it. The second tells, in images of deluge and ransacked shrine, the coming of strangers who cast down the gods of the land and the bird that bore their word. The language mingles the Latin classics of school and Igbo invocations.
Context
The collection appeared in 1964 in Ibadan, from the small publishing house of a writers' club of which its author was one of the founders: the pamphlets were printed there in a few hundred copies. The first sequence had first appeared in a magazine two years earlier. Its author published only such pamphlets in his lifetime; it was four years later that a London publisher gathered his sequences into a single book, the only one read today, which a Nigerian novelist has prefaced.
Who it is for
A collection of short poems in English. His poetry is reputed to be difficult and assumes intertwined classical and Igbo references.
Prizes and reception
These sequences are counted among the peaks of African poetry in English, and during their author's lifetime they circulated only in the form of pamphlets.