Edozie Udeze, gives an insight into the life and writings of JP Clark –Bekederemo, the poet, dramatist and director as the literary great clocks 80.
THE widely acclaimed view that the life of a writer is often riddled with jokes and realities has indeed manifested itself in the life of Professor John Pepper Clark. When information got out that he was to celebrate his 80th birthday on the 9th of December, 2013, what first cames the mind was to go check his personal resume on the internet. Unfortunately, the personal information on him says that he was born on April 6, 1935 as against the December date which close sources to him kept flashing to the press as the authentic date.
Something must be wrong somewhere and we needed to cross-check very well in order not to miss out on the frenzy concerning this celebration. In the end, a close source to the family actually confirmed that Clark was born on 9th of December, 1933. What then went wrong? We wondered. What he did in the early years of his career was to alter his date of birth by two years when he was to enter the civil service.
But being a playwright and poet, JP Clark must have clearly seen a lot of satire, fun and drama of life when he was an information officer in the Federal Civil Service. However, that does not in any way diminish the iconic flavour in this writer who began as an undergraduate at the University College, Ibadan, in 1955 to show that he was ready to shake the world with his writings. Born Johnson Pepper Clark Bekeredemo, he immediately dropped the rest and shortened his name to just J.P Clark. This was essentially to fit into the classical colonial flavour of his time. But lately, Clark has discovered that he could not continue to do away with his native name and the impact it has on his creative nature.
Today, he is properly addressed and known as John Pepper Clark-Bekeredemo, an omission of which he is often known to frown at any moment it is wrongly done in public. “Bekeredemo is not just my native name, it is one my family is known for over the years”, he once told a confused audience that sought to know the truth. “I am an Ijaw man who grew up in the Creeks. It can be seen in one of my plays, The Raft. That is the typical life of an Ijaw man.
CLARK is indeed fond of his Ijaw origin and the impact that has created in his writing career. As one of the country’s most versatile thinkers, his works have moved back and forth between Nigeria and the West, between traditional modes of expressions and indeed European-derived forms. Like Richard Ali, a writer and publisher, puts it, “This is so because JP exemplifies the writer-in-the-arena for all of us. Yes, he has been around at every turn of our national and literary history. And this is why his works have always reflected our national and traditional sentiments as a people. He is indeed iconic and outstanding”.
Having been exposed to British-run schools at a very tender age in the towns of Okrika and Jeremi in Bayelsa State, young Clark began to feel the need to recreate his own world with his pen. It was at the Government College, Ughelli, Delta State where he graduated from in 1954 that his instinct as a writer began to fester. He once said: “Oh, Ughelli, was good for those of us who knew the direction we were to face in life.”
By the time he gained admission into the University College, Ibadan (now U.I.) in 1955, he had already become noted as an important writer. A restless thinker himself, he and his fellow undergraduates quickly established a literary magazine called The Horn which equally served as a vehicle for Clark’s early works. His first poem Night Rain soon made its debut and in it he invoked the spirit of the African person. Reprinted severally, Night Rain set him on the part to stardom that he also began to pen down the early sentiments for Song of a Goat, his first and most remarkable play to date.
In some parts of Night Rain, he wrote, “So, let us roll to the beat of drumming all over the land/ And under its ample soothing hand joined to that of the sea….” As early as that time, he had foreseen the tragic innuendoes of his people and how oil could eventually upturn the apple-cart. Professor Tanure Ojaide, a fellow Niger Deltan and renowned poet, situates Clark as an outstanding writer “who has inserted the Niger Delta, especially the Ijaw folklore, into the modern African literary landscape. A typical poet and poetic dramatist per excellence, he has expressed the national beauty of the era before the exploitation of oil started to degrade the environment.”
Even in his most famous play, Song of a Goat which he wrote while in the university, but was published in 1961, he replicated the Greek theory of an ancient scenario that dwelt on violent events to zero into a typical Ijaw tradition. He predicted a tragic scenario; he replayed it and tried to make it a national phenomenon and calamity. Clark used the paradox of an impotent man to unmask Nigeria, a nation steeped in the throes of malady, confusion and inept leadership.
A poetic dramatist to the core, Clark’s every action, move and mesmerisation are propelled by who he is and what he believes in. When he was invited to Princeton University, USA in 1963 for his second degree in English, he found that the racial condition in the society was repulsive and incongruous. He clashed repeatedly with his hosts, and was asked to leave Princeton after a year. In his artistic response, he acknowledged that the visit was productive. He quickly released a memoir entitled America, their America published in Britain in 1964. That book stunned and exposed the American society in the way it operated class and racial differentials.
An audacious writer whom Ojaide described as one who exhibits cultural identity of his people without reservation. “Yes, he has contributed immensely in the establishment of the modern African literary canon in both poetry and drama. Many of us younger writers started by following his path before establishing our own voices. For all these and more, he is considered one of the greatest voices in the literary circle in the world.”
The Niger Delta activist
Arnold Udoka, a playwright and poet who encountered Clark as an undergraduate, confessed that without the likes of Clark whose works expressed a lot about humanity, he may not have ended up being what he is today. “His works touched on the very issues that bind and divide us as a people. As an undergraduate studying Theatre Arts at the University of Calabar, his works drew us back and forth into our own Niger Delta world- a world where nature was at a point of disintegration. In fact, he described the works of some of us the younger poets as subversive and militant. All these are all what we live with today”.
Noted for his dogged fight against injustice, in 1985, he, Soyinka and Achebe paid a visit to the then Head of State, General Ibrahim Babaginda, asking him to rescind his plan to execute General Mammam Vatsa, a soldier poet, who was alleged to be involved in a coup to overthrow the regime. Unfortunately, a few hours after that historic visit, Vatsa was executed. A stunned Clark told the nation that he was shocked and saddened to hear the news.
In subsequent years, he began to distance himself from government that when Chinua Achebe, a close friend of his was buried in May this year, he and Soyinka were absent. A shocked nation asked why and Clark, in his usual brusique way of showing his disdain, accused the government of the day of hijacking the burial programme. “This is the same Achebe that the government castigated, calling him all sorts of names for rejecting the national honours award and telling them the truth. I can’t be part of it”.
Quoting a portion of Casualties to justify how Clark has come to become a true patriot, Ebinyo Ogbowei, a fellow Ijaw man, writer and academic, said: “Clark shows to us the casualties of our collective regression to primordial past. And, sadly, we haven’t made any concerted effort to regain that high moral ground lost since the pogroms that lasted from July to October 1966, precipitating an avoidable civil war. For me, Clark is a great patriot, teacher and master craftsman”
Some of his works
Clark’s unsparing depiction of the Nigerian civil war was part of what dismayed the Federal Government at that moment. He had raised a lot of questions on the exigencies of the war and posed issues that the government was not comfortable with. Yet, in Masquerade, another play that carried over some of the characters in Song of a Goat, he presented on stage, a rich tapestry of West African life, setting it in a paradoxical form. He depicted the disruptive force of romantic love against the structures and settings of traditions.
In The Raft, he wholly explored the typical lifestyle of man in the Creeks. He invents floating logs and woods down the Delta River to send home his message. There, the relationship between the market women and what they encounter when the raft breaks into two or more pieces in the river is not only pathetic but evokes the spirit of wantonness in the mind of the reader. The play is truly allegory of the ethnic fault lines and sentiments that have today split and despoiled the writer’s homeland.
In 1965, he released a collection of poems entitled A Reed in the Tide. It has themes that lampooned the leadership of the society and which the powers that be did not find funny. In 1966, he wrote Ozidi, a play that found space in the traditional music and dance styles of his people.
His 28 war poems done in a collection entitled Casualties addressed series of issues on the civil war. He was horrified on the loss of his class mate Emmanuel Ifeajuna who was consumed by the war. In it he said, ‘oh, the casualties are many and a good number well outside the scene of ravage and wreck/They are the emissaries of rift/So smug in smoke-room they haunt abroad/They are wandering minstrels who, beating on…”
In the 1980s, he began to feel the impulse to retire from active teaching from the University. Soon after, he and his wife, Professor Ebun established PEC Repertory Theatre, in Lagos for artistic performances. However, he continued with his writings some of which were staged at PEC and other centres. A play called The Return Home was part of that dramatic era.
In 1991, he received The Nigerian National Merit Award for literary excellence and other awards and prizes and fellowships of some Ivy League institutions worldwide. He also has an award named after him by the Association of Nigerian Authors, (ANA), in the poetry category.
