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Nigeria: Osundare Wins Poetry Prize
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Vanguard (Lagos)
24 July 2008
Posted to the web 24 July 2008
Uduma Kalu
Professor Niyi Osundare has won this year's Tchcaya U Tamsi Award for African Poetry. The prize, debuted in 1989, is named after Tchicaya U Tam'si, one of the continent's best poets.
The Tchcaya U Tamsi Award has been given every two years for African poetry in the small Moroccan city of Asilah. It is worth $10, 000, the highest for the literary genre in Africa. Nigeria's highest poetry prize is ANA/Cadbury Prize worth $1000.
A letter from the organisers of the award, Assilah Forum Foundation, a non-profit organisation, says the award ceremony holds from the fifth to the ninth of next month in Tangiers, Morroco.
The letter signed by Mohammed Bentoudja, secretary general of the foundation, said Osundare was chosen by its jury as the 2008 laureate.
The award ceremony slated for August 7, is part of the 30th anniversary of Assilah International Cultural Festival. But the ceremony will be preceded by a one day round table on 'Africa and the Hazard', a topic proposed by the french writer and ethnocenologue, Madame Francoise Grund. Osundare is equally invited to take part in the debate.
Chicaya U Tam'si, born August 25, 1931 in Mpili; died on April 22, 1988 in Bazancourt, near Paris, was a Congolese author. His official name was Gérald-Félix Tchicaya; his artist name means small paper that speaks for a country in Kikongo.
The Congo is in Central Africa. U Tam'si spent his childhood in France, where he worked as a journalist until he returned to his homeland in 1960. Back in Congo, he continued to work as a journalist; during this time he maintained contact to the politician Patrice Lumumba. In 1961, he started to work for UNESCO.
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U Tam'si's poetry incorporates elements of surrealism; it often has vivid historic images, and comments African life and society, as well as humanity in general.
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