Wole Soyinka
Black Orpheus Dispatch: On Re-Using History
On re-usiting history 68-sh, 50-sh years later I The moment you use something, you initiate its death. II The most significant threat to historical work is not its inevitable decay (which is often how it appears in academic and public discourse), but the fact that said interventions become dated and fall out of use. In […]
“Thus Counsels Ìṣẹ̀ṣe” by Wọlé Ṣóyínká
[Lecture delivered on September 1, 2023 at the Freedom Park, Lagos.] ÌSẸ̀ṢE has come, but not gone. We salute all those – human rights activists, community leaders, affronted citizens, advocates of equity, and all – but the state governors most especially – who have taken history to task and boldly formalized a level praying ground […]
The Raft, the Rift and the Reconciliation – J.P. Clark among his Peers
One of the iconic photographs in Nigerian literature shows the poet John Pepper “J.P.” Clark Bekederemo – together with the novelist Chinua Achebe and the playwright Wole Soyinka – going to visit the military dictator Ibrahim Babangida sometime in 1986. Their mission was to plead for the life of Mamman Vatsa, a military General, who […]