Poet and playwright J. P. Clark is one of Nigeria's foremost literary artists. Along with two other Nigerians, the novelist Chinua Achebe and the playwright Wole Soyinka, Clark is generally accorded a place in the first rank among writers of the British Commonwealth. His A Reed in the Tide (1965) was the first collection of poems by a black writer in Africa to be published by a major overseas company (Longmans). Some of his works have produced some controversy (in particular, his poems in Casualties , 1970), but his poetic diction is unrivaled for precision and rhythmic control while retaining the patterns of common speech.

Born on 6 April 1935, he was one of many sons of the Ijaw chief Clark Fuludu Bekederemo of Kiagbodo in the western Niger delta region of Nigeria. Perhaps due to the influence of his mother, the former Poro Adomi, Clark and two elder brothers (Edwin Kiagbodo Clark...