John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo

John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo

Other Literary Forms
John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo is recognized as a major poet for his collections Poems (1962), A Reed in the Tide: A Selection of Poems (1965), Casualties: Poems, 1966-1968 (1970), and A Decade of Tongues (1981). He has also published literary criticism with The Example of Shakespeare: Critical Essays on African
Literature (1970) and a travel diary, America, Their America (1964).

Achievements
John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo was a member of an extraordinary group of creative young Nigerian writers
and artists who began their careers in the early 1960’s with publication in the legendary magazine Black
Orpheus. Contributors besides Clark-Bekederemo included Chinua Achebe, the Nobel Prize winner Wole
Soyinka, and Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo. The nature of this publication defined Clark-Bekederemo’s
subsequent work. He wished to establish and confirm the importance and dignity of his Ijaw inheritance in the
river delta of Nigeria and yet communicate these roots through publication in English. Both in his poetry and
in his drama, he presented his ancestry with affectionate sensibility. Yet because he had become an academic
within the formal university system that the British had exported to West Africa, he was committed to linking
this antecedent with the wider concept of international, universal human issues. His major works draw from
the specific environment of his birth. He uses English to make profound statements about the conditions of
humanity in the contemporary world, but an English skillfully adapted to express its African context.
Biography
John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo was born in the Western Rivers area of Nigeria in Kiagbodo, Warri Province,
on April 6, 1935. His father, Clark Fuludu Bekederemo, was a chief. John attended several local schools, the
most important being Government College in Ughelli. In 1954, he spent a year as a clerk in a government
office before earning entrance to a college in Ibadan that would subsequently become the University of
Ibadan. At the university, he rapidly entered the literary milieu and became editor first of Beacon and later of
Horn, student magazines that offered early opportunities for publication to several writers who would become
the first generation of Nigerian authors. In 1960, he was graduated with a B.A. in English, worked briefly as
information officer with the Ministry of Information at Ibadan, and then was appointed an editorial writer for
the Express, a Lagos newspaper. It was this position that permitted his appointment as Parvin Fellow at
Princeton during the 1962-1963 academic year. For various reasons, this opportunity occasioned mutual
dissatisfaction, and for Clark-Bekederemo, it provided the basis for a rather bad-tempered diary of that year,
America, Their America (1964). On his return to Nigeria, he spent a year as Research Fellow at Ibadan and
began the field research that produced the Ozidi saga. In 1964, he married a Yoruba woman, Ebun Odutola, a
talented actress. They had three children: two daughters, Ebiere and Imoyadue, and a son, Ambekederemo.
That same year, he joined the faculty of the University of Lagos and in 1972 was appointed professor of
English. The years 1975 and 1976 saw him as Distinguished Fellow at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
In 1979, however, he chose to give up an academic career in order to concentrate on writing. He returned to
John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo 1
his birthplace at Kiagbodo. He became influential in Nigerian theater, and in 1982, he formed the PEC
Repertory in Lagos. After his return to Kiagbodo, he preferred to add his father’s name, Bekederemo, to his
own in formal matters, as demonstrated in his collection of plays and poems published in 1991.
Analysis
John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo’s first play was Song of a Goat. Its title indicates the multiple cultural
elements he integrates into his drama. There is obvious reference to classic Greek in that the very term
“tragedy” translates as “goat song” (tragos meaning “goat,” and oide meaning “song”). There is also a
parallel tradition from Africa. By Ijaw custom, a goat is the appropriate sacrifice—in the manner of the
Hebraic concept of scapegoat. Similarities with the Irish playwright John Millington Synge are also apparent.
Clark-Bekederemo accepts Synge’s view of the tragic dignity of humble people.
Song of a Goat
The plot of Song of a Goat presents a conflict between traditional and modern beliefs, though this does not
seem to be the central element. The tragedy itself derives from urgent human responses. Zifa’s wife, Ebiere,
consults a “masseur,” who is both doctor and priest, concerning her infertility. From her diffident
explanations, it becomes clear that the husband has become impotent: “I keep my house/ Open by night and
day/ But my lord will not come in.” The doctor argues that “some one has to go in, or they will take rust.” He
advises the tribal custom that someone within the family, such as Tonye, his younger brother, substitute for
the husband. “That’ll be a retying of knots,” and there will be continuity of issue. Clark-Bekederemo
presents a curious psychological ambivalence in response to this advice. Even though presumably the practice
is legalized by long-term custom (“What I suggested our fathers did not forbid”), Ebiere is as horrified as any
Western wife would be. “I’ll not stay here longer to hear this kind of talk,” she says. With ominous
perception, she answers, “That will be an act of death.” Her husband Zifa is also violently shocked by the
suggestion. He prefers to wait: “The thing may come back any day.” He is shamed that he will receive public
scorn for his impotence. “Everybody will be saying, there/ Goes the cock. . . .” There are continuing hints
that his problem is imposed by the gods as punishment for some very vaguely defined and unpurged offense
committed by his father.
After some months of barrenness, Ebiere, bitter against her husband and lusting with thwarted passion, teases
Tonye into seducing her. He resists at first, for the deed is wicked, but he embraces her with such ardor that
there is no possible pretense that he is simply obeying the decrees of custom. This is naked adultery
passionately performed. Zifa finds his incestuous brother in his bed and berates him: “I can’t believe it. . . .
My own brother who I have looked after.” Zifa decides that he will kill the adulterer, but before he can do
this, in shame Tonye goes and hangs himself. It seems there is nobility in this decision, for he takes on himself
the crime of suicide and frees Zifa from the penalty for committing the most heinous crime conceivable in
Ijaw life: a deed that offends the gods. Zifa recognizes this sacrifice. “I thought to kill/ You but in that office
you have again performed my part.” Only now does his self-condemnation confirm the possible justice of the
act. “He went to my wife. . . . Was that not a brotherly act?” Ebiere is said to have miscarried his brother’s
son. Despairing at the disaster his own anguish and jealousy have wrought, Zifa commits suicide by drowning
himself in the sea, yielding to the power of the gods whom in his life he has opposed. The masseur concludes
by attempting words of comfort and reconciliation, rather than blame, in the face of tragedy that reduces men
to misery and defeat. “It is enough/ You know now that each day we live/ Hints at why we cried at birth.”
Here is the moral essence of the tragic condition. The urgency in this play does not rest with the external
cultural conflict, though this is often mentioned. The conflict between human passion and moral duty provides
the trigger for the inescapable disaster constantly prophesied by an old woman who leads the neighbors in the
role of Chorus. Cassandra-like, she issues warnings that are perceived but not heeded. This makes for
absorbing drama in the classic tradition.
Biography 2
The richness of the language more than sustains the tension of the events. Clark-Bekederemo enjoys the long,
extended poetic metaphor. Ebiere’s unpregnant womb is compared to a “piece of fertile land—run fallow with
elephant grass,” an analogy he carries through to extreme development. This technique connects with the Ijaw
preference for the riddle when matters are too intimate to be spoken of directly. There is the almost
Shakespearean invective: “You lame thing, you crawling piece/ Of withered flesh.” Clark-Bekederemo also
employs the profoundest declamatory poetry. “You may well cry. But this is nothing/ To beat your breast. It
was how/ We all began and will end.” Here is something rare on the contemporary stage—a modern tragedy, a
form that Western playwrights have only rarely achieved in the twentieth century.
The Masquerade
The Masquerade is closely linked with the earlier play. It is essentially similar in mood and structure. One of
the chief characters derives from Song of a Goat. It is now determined that Ebiere died giving birth to
Tonye’s son, Tufa. The earlier play spoke of her surviving a miscarriage. That minor point indicates that the
two plays were not conceived originally as part of a single cycle. Tufa grows up and travels from his home,
hoping like Oedipus to escape from the curse of his illegitimate origin. The play begins with a sense of
foreboding. Without knowing the reason (“as far as I know no feasts have been left out,” says one), the
villagers see ominous signs: “The tilt [of the moon] is prominent,/ It is never so but there is disaster.”
Into this situation comes Tufa. Titi is the local belle. A neighbor’s description of her almost parodies the
famous report of Cleopatra by Enobarbus: “Her head high in that silver tiara so/ Brilliant it was blindness
trying to tell/ Its characters.” Tufa immediately falls for her, and at first the affair seems blessed. The couple
make love in lyric poetry: “Your flesh under flush/ Of cam flashes many times lovelier than gold/ Or pearls.”
Soon, however, gossip informs of the tragic but polluting events of Tufa’s past: “His father/ Usurped the bed
of his elder brother, yes,/ Brazenly in his lifetime, and for shame/ Of it hanged himself.” Titi’s father, Diribi,
immediately condemns Tufa and forbids the marriage: “Consider the taint.” He fears that the curse Tufa
bears will spread among the entire family. If they associate with him, the gods will threaten them, too. The
mother is equally dismissive, saying, “the man is no more your husband now happily/ His past and back are
in full view.” Tufa is told “leave my daughter alone, . . . and go your curse-laden way.” To her father’s
horror, Titi defies him and argues that she will marry Tufa in spite of “this prospect of pollution.” Her father
curses Titi, calling her “this witch and bitch/ Who has quite infected her breed.” Tufa, however, is touched by
the generosity of her love and recognizes her devotion. Titi “called herself my wife, my bride ready to go
with me/ In spite of my shame.” Her father, in spite of his great affection, is more concerned with his
consequent family shame and determines to kill her. Though “she tried tears, tried prayers,” he shoots her
with the very gun Tufa had given him as a present. He turns the gun on Tufa and wounds him mortally. Tufa
staggers out to join Titi, after confessing, “I am that unmentionable beast/ Born of woman to brother.”
Borrowing from Greek, Clark-Bekederemo has the priests observe, “Who/ The gods love they visit with
calamity.” No action need be taken against the father. In this situation, no human punishment can add to the
misfortune imposed. He has destroyed himself. He “who was so tall and strong/ Before. . . . Now at one
stroke/ See him splintered to the ground.” The tragedy that began with Song of a Goat has now worked itself
out, purging the crime from which it originated in the manner of the great Greek tragedies.
Again, one should observe the controlled poetry that Clark-Bekederemo employs. Like that of Shakespeare, it
can range without any apparent contradiction between colloquial conversation and great poetic feeling.
Beautiful are the lines: “It is the time/ Of night. There is a catch in the air/ Will not hold. Not a rustle of
leaves,/ Not a cry of a bird, nor the sudden charge/ Of sheep or goats. . . .”
Song of a Goat 3
The Raft
The Raft explores a new topic, a circumstance reminiscent of Stephen Crane’s famous short story “The Open
Boat.” It describes four workers: Olotu, the educated townsman; Kengide, the cynic; Ogro, the traditionalist;
and Ibobo, the priest figure. They are camping on a huge raft of hardwood logs, sailing it down river to the
port. Owing to mischance or carelessness, the ropes tying it during the night come away and they drift
helplessly down the river, unable to control direction or to determine where they are because of the heavy fog.
This danger frightens them, and one by one these men are brought to the breaking point and die. The raft itself
would seem to be a general symbol of individuals’ inability to be masters of their environment, indicating
their weakness when pitted against the superior power of circumstance. Some critics have argued that because
this was written when Nigerian political events seemed to be equally drifting before the resolution of an army
coup, direct reference must be intended. The times may conceivably have been in Clark-Bekederemo’s mind
when he invented this plot, but the play is certainly far more universal in its concept than any political tract
would be. The characters in the play do not represent public persons, even obliquely, nor are they conceived
as representing generalized attitudes of the time. They are individuals battling fierce problems in a highly
realistic setting. The play succeeds on the stage because the potential allegory is never allowed to intrude into
the actual events.
The raft begins to drift when by some inexplicable means its mooring ropes break. “What I can’t understand
is how all/ The seven gave way. . . . Some madman/ Came aboard and cut us loose?/ Some ghost or evil god.”
The speculations indicate the cosmic nature of their plight. They find that they are being carried out to sea on
the ebb tide. Desperately they apply all of their skill. As they contemplate the prospect of death, they agonize
and discuss their chances, reminisce about their pasts, their families, their jobs, their hopes. Yet disaster
cannot be avoided. First, Olotu is taken away when a part of the raft breaks off and he is unable to swim back.
“He’s adrift and lost!” is the cry. The greater truth comes in the responsive observation, “We are all adrift
and lost!” Then they hear a ship coming. Ogro decides his best chance is to swim to it and be hauled aboard.
The sailors see him and beat him away until he becomes entwined in the stern wheel and is killed. None will
assist in escape. Now only Ibobo and Kengide remain. Ibobo thinks that he recognizes a small town they are
passing and decides to jump overboard. Kengide holds him back, warning him of sharks, but Ibobo asks, “are/
You afraid to be alone?” With a more generalized recognition that typically links actual event to universality,
Kengide says, “Aren’t you afraid to be left alone/ In this world, aren’t you?” They decide to shout in the
hope of attracting attention. The last lines of the play are their forlorn and feeble voices crying “Ee-ee-eee!”
which, in a stage direction, Clark-Bekederemo reminds his readers is “the long squeal as used when women
go wood-gathering and by nightfall have still not found their way home.” In a sense, the tragedy here is less
personal, more cosmic. The suffering is not imposed on the characters because there is some taint in their past,
some evil to be assuaged. Here is the more pessimistic conclusion that all persons are doomed to suffer in a
universe that is implacably indifferent to their fate. This view does not allow the note of hope that occurs in
the final resolution of many tragedies when even death can be seen as a kind of liberation from the pains of
enduring the arrows of life. Here, death is an end without purpose and without meaning imposed by powers
beyond human beings’ control and indifferent to their fate.
Ozidi
Ozidi brings a major change in the direction of Clark-Bekederemo’s work. The original Ozidi is a traditional
poetic saga of the Ijaw people. The playwright affirms its epic status, calling it “an old story, truly heroic in
proportion, arising out of a people’s sense of their past.” In its original form, its performance lasts seven days
and is embellished with dance, music, ritual masks, and costumes. In drawing on the historical event,
Clark-Bekederemo has departed from the universalist ideas of his earlier plays and immersed himself deeply
in his African heritage. This involvement makes it difficult for him to extract a sequence of action that will be
appropriate for a formal theatrical presentation, inevitably restricted in both time span and area.
The Raft 4
Clark-Bekederemo’s concern for Ozidi has an extended history. He first heard the tale when Afoluwa of
Ofonibenga recited it to an eager school audience. It had such an impact that he worked for ten years as a
researcher to record permanently this oral, public event. The results were a film, a record of the music, and, in
1977, an Ijaw/English side-by-side transcription of nearly four hundred pages. While continuing this
long-term study, in 1966, he attempted to distill the extensive epic into an English-language dramatized
version. The result presents barriers to the non-African reader. The fullest comprehension may seem to require
anthropological knowledge. Nevertheless, the play has moments of dramatic intensity and the basic plot is
clear enough, even though compression requires external explication.
The story spans two generations. A new king must be selected, this time from the house of Ozidi. He refuses
the honor and is amazed when his younger brother, Temugedege, a discreditable and feeble figure “dribbling
with drink,” demands his rights to the throne. He greedily imagines his power, intending to become “terror of
all our/ Territories.” The populace consider his pretensions ridiculous. Ozidi agrees with their judgments but
insists that, as his brother has been made king, all the normal honors are due him, including lavish gifts: “A
god is/ A god once you make him so,” he says. His subjects have no intention of gratifying so feeble a
monarch, for “nobody is going to serve Temugedege; he is an idiot.” When Ozidi insists that the traditional
generosities are required no matter how inadequate the recipient, there are murmurs of revolt. Rather than tax
themselves for safety from the ruthless Ozidi, they prefer to plan his death. Because one of the expectations of
a new king is a symbolic skull, they attack Ozidi, cunningly destroy his magic security, and send his head to
his brother. “There is our tribute to you, King.” He is too weak to do other than flee. Ozidi’s grandmother
Oreame escapes with his pregnant wife, Orea, who delivers a child also called Ozidi.
The second section deals with young Ozidi’s upbringing largely at the hands of his grandmother, who uses
her skills in magic to develop his courage so that he will be the means of revenge for his father’s murder. She
intends that he “must go forth and scatter death among/ His father’s enemies.” He returns to his father’s
home and reinstates himself: “Let’s raise again the compound of my fathers.” Urged by his grandmother and
protected by her magic, he seeks out his enemies and throws down a challenge by shamefully and publicly
stripping their wives. He singles out his opponents and fights them one by one. Though they confront him
boldly, “Ozidi, I am going to eat you up today,” he is always victorious. Others seeking to avenge their
friends are likewise eliminated, their magic brought to nothing against Oreame’s spells. The sequence of
deaths affects Ozidi, until a woman can ask, “Is there nothing else you can do except kill?” Finally blinded
by herbs, he kills both enemy and grandmother, for she has not thought to protect herself from her own
grandson. He is attacked by fever and nursed by his mother. He wins that bodily battle and thus defeats King
Smallpox, the ultimate enemy of the people, who will not “set foot again on this shore.” The end is somewhat
surprising, but it is clear that some general victory other than satisfied revenge is required to achieve Ozidi’s
full heroic status.
The events in this play are repetitive and sometimes confusing. The language, seeming sometimes close to
Ijaw, makes for difficult interpretaion. At other times, it has the familiar Clark-Bekederemo lyrical conviction.
“What need have/ We to stand up when silk cotton trees lie prostrate/ We are reeds only, mere reeds in the
storm, and must/ Stretch our broken backs on the ground.” Ozidi is less immediately accessible to a
non-Nigerian reader, but it has the same tragic power and evocative language found in the earlier plays and
exhibits Clark-Bekederemo’s determination to draw ever more deeply from his African experience and
culture.
All for Oil
For many years after his writing of Ozidi, Clark-Bekederemo seems to have preferred to concentrate on
poetry, and perhaps his reputation in this genre is higher than his reputation as a dramatist. However, his
contribution to the theater continued with production of The Bikoroa Plays, The Wives’ Revolt, and All for
Ozidi 5
Oil.
The production of Clark-Bekederemo’s All for Oil coincided with the celebration of Nigeria’s fortieth
anniversary of independence. The play is a biographical drama that draws on Nigeria’s historical background
involving the trade of palm oil and the present plight over oil in Nigeria and the Niger Delta. All for Oil is a
literary testament to Clark-Bekederemo’s belief that “we should sit together and decide the conditions of our
living together.”