Memory of the World; 2012 - unesdoc - Unesco

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Christopher Okigbo collection
Inscribed 2007
What is it
Christopher Okigbo’s original manuscripts, notebooks,
journals, correspondence, photographs, typescripts
of interviews and other personal papers.
Why was it inscribed
Christopher Okigbo is widely acknowledged as the
outstanding postcolonial English-language African
poet and one of the major modernist writers of the
20th century.
Where is it
Christopher Okigbo Foundation, Brussels, Belgium
Christopher Okigbo was a Nigerian poet who died fighting
for the independence of Biafra in 1967. The documents
represent a much-awaited source of unique insights into
hitherto unknown aspects of this outstanding poet’s life
and art.
The collection includes manuscripts (handwritten and
typescript) of previously published and unpublished
poems, experimental writing, literary projects,
sketches, correspondence, journals, manuscripts of his
contemporary authors, travel documents, photographs
and typescripts of interviews, dating from 1956 until his
death in 1967.
512 Christopher Okigbo collection
The papers in the collection exemplify African
postcolonial literature in English and poems in the Igbo
vernacular, demonstrating the possibilities for writing in
African languages with an oral tradition. The papers are
unique and irreplaceable, and possibly have the potential
to provide new insights into the life and work of this major
African literary figure.
There are original sections of his masterpiece Labyrinths
and also unpublished works, including some experimental
poems in his mother tongue, Igbo. Taken together with
the cache of correspondence, notes, drafts, jottings and
even doodles in the manuscripts, these papers show the
canon of Okigbo’s poetry in a new light. By extension
they will have a profound influence on postcolonial
African literature and even, on a larger scale, 20th-century
modernist poetics.
The poet lost his life fighting for the freedom of the
secessionist Republic of Biafra, in the firm belief that the
massacre of Eastern Nigerians during the crisis of 1966
constituted a major act of inhumanity. Several of these
documents were created in the short-lived Republic
of Biafra, the name under which secessionist Eastern
Nigeria asserted its sovereignty on 30 May 1967. They not
only contain crucial information about the phenomenon