Ogaga Ifowodo
 Ogaga
Ifowodo, was born in Oleh, Delta State. Trained originally as a lawyer,
he holds an MFA from Cornell University where he is currently finishing
a Ph.D in English. He has published three collections of poems: Homeland
and Other Poems, winner of the 1993 Association of Nigerian Authors
(ANA) poetry prize; Madiba, winner of the 2003 ANA/Cadbury poetry
prize; and The Oil Lamp, winner of the 2005 ANA/NDDC Gabriel
Okara poetry prize.
Ifowodo
was a frontline student leader as an undergraduate at the University
of Benin. He worked for eight years with the Civil Liberties Organisation,
Nigeria’s premier human rights group, and between 1997 and 1998 was
held under preventive detention by the Abacha military regime; a memoir
of his prison experience, excerpts from which have been featured in
Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing (edited by the Malawian
poet, Jack Mapanje), New Writing 14 (published by Granta), Nigeria’s
Vanguard newspaper, and at www.africanwriting.com is in progress. His poems have been translated
into German, Dutch and Romanian and have also been widely published
in anthologies and magazines, including Voices from all Over: Poems
with Notes and Activities released last year by Oxford University
Press, Step Into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature,
The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry International, English
in Africa, The Massachusetts Review, among others. Ifowodo
is a regular contributor to the op-ed pages of The
Guardian, Nigerian Village Square and other major Nigerian newspapers.
In
1998 Ifowodo was named recipient of the PEN USA Barbara Goldsmith Freedom-to-Write
Award and of the Poets of All Nations (Netherlands) “Free Word”
Award. He is an honorary member of the PEN Centres of the USA, Canada
and Germany and a fellow of the Iowa Writing Program.
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