BREAKING! Erudite Author, Prof. JP Clark Is Dead

Nigerian poets whose works have been studied far and worldwide, Prof. John Pepper Clark, is dead.

The award-winning playwright, died at undisclosed hospital in Lagos, family source said.

The literary icon has been down and receiving treatment for the past one month, the source disclosed.

Clark was born in Kiagbodo to Ijaw parents in 1935. He schooled in Nigeria till his first degree in English from the University of Ibadan and then went on to work both at UI and then later at the University of Lagos.

While in these two places, he was actively engaged in literary activity, being founder of the student poetry magazine The Horn at University of Ibadan, and also coeditor of the literary journal Black Orpheus when he was lecturer at the University of Lagos.

Clark studied a year at Princeton, after which he published America, Their America (1964), which was a criticism of middle-class American values and black-American lifestyles.

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His works also included Poems (1962) and A Reed in the Tide (1965), His Casualties: Poems 1966–68 (1970) which talks about the Nigerian civil war, Decade of Tongues (1981), State of the Union (1985, as J.P. Clark Bekederemo), and Mandela and Other Poems (1988). He wrote and published plays as well.