Gabriel Imomotimi Okara (24 April 1921 – 25 March 2019)[1] was a Nigerian poet[2] and novelist who was born in Bumoundi in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria.
The first modernist poet of Anglophone Africa, he is best known for his early experimental novel, The Voice (1964), and his award-winning poetry, published in The Fisherman's Invocation (1978)[3] and The Dreamer, His Vision (2005).
[5] After leaving school Okara wrote plays and features for radio, and in 1953 his poem "The Call of the River Nun" won an award at the Nigerian Festival of Arts.
[5] He attended the landmark African Writers Conference held on 1 June 1962 at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, along with such writers as Chinua Achebe, Rajat Neogy, Bloke Modisane, Okot p'Bitek, Bernard Fonlon, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Olusegun Olusola, Grace Ogot, Jonathan Kariara, Rebecca Njau, Wole Soyinka, John Pepper Clark, Saunders Redding, Christopher Okigbo, Francis Ademola, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Arthur Maimane, and others.
The novel creates a symbolic landscape in which the forces of traditional African culture and Western materialism contend.... Okara’s skilled portrayal of the inner tensions of his hero distinguished him from many other Nigerian novelists.