Cambridge House, Ibadan, 1962-66: Politics and Poetics in Okigbo's Last Years

The interpretation of Christopher Okigbo's poetry remains deeply controversial more than forty years after his death. The poet himself did not help matters by telling interviewers that he did not ever set out to communicate meanings, but to make music. This paper investigates Okigbo's conception of the music of poetry and opens a new approach to the poet's work. It argues, through a close reading of two difficult poems of the 1962-66 period, that Okigbo's poetics did not prevent him from engaging deeply with the realities of his experience.