P. Clark, who had the advantages of university teaching careers and university support for their creative writing. Because of his comparatively small literary production Okara had not received as much attention as some of his more well-known compatriots until the publication of his first collection of verse,
The Fisherman's Invocation (1978); since then he has been seen as having a major place among the poets of the African continent.
Born 24 April 1921 in Bumoundi, in southeastern Nigeria, to Prince Sampson G. Okara, a Christian businessman, and Martha Olodiama Okara, Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara first attended local schools and then, from 1935 to 1940, Government College in Umuahia. Because of World War II he transferred to Yaba Higher College, where he passed the Senior Cambridge Examination, specializing in art, which he had studied with the well-known Nigerian sculptor Ben Enwonwu. After being a schoolteacher at the Ladilac Institute in Yaba, Okara tried to join the Royal Air Force, but, unable to become a pilot, he instead joined the British Overseas Airway Corporation auxiliary, traveled to Gambia, was briefly a businessman, and in 1945 became a bookbinder for the Government Press, for which he worked until 1954.
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