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.