Biography on Gabriel Okara

GABRIEL OKARA-

Gabriel Imomtimi Gbaingbain Okara is a Nigerian poet and novelist born on April 21,1921 in Bumodi. Okara was the son of an Ijọ chief. He was educated at Government College, Umuahia, and later at Yaba Higher College. He studied journalism at Northwestern University in 1949, and before the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War worked as Information Officer for the Eastern Nigerian Government Service. In his poems he has chosen to look at the problems Nigeria and the entire African nation, based on a series of contrasts in which symbols are neatly balanced against each other. Okara also incorporated African thought, religion, folklore, and imagery into both his verse and prose.