Background
Born in Kiagbodo, Nigeria, to Ijaw parents.
JP CLark and Mrs Ebun Clark cutting the78th Birthday Cake with his Daughter Miss E Clark.
Born in Kiagbodo, Nigeria, to Ijaw parents.
Critics have noted three main stages in Clark's poetic career: the apprenticeship stage of trial and experimentation, exemplified by such juvenilia as "Darkness and Light" and "Iddo Bridge"; the imitative stage, in which he appropriates such Western poetic conventions as the couplet measure and the sonnet sequence, exemplified in such lyrics as "To a Fallen Soldier" and "Of Faith"; and the individualized stage, in which he attains the maturity and originality of form of such poems as "Night Rain", "Out of the Tower", and "Song".
Clark's contribution to other genres includes his translation of the Ozidi Saga (1977), an oral literary epic of the Ijaw that in its local setting would normally take seven days to perform.
A widely travelled man, Clark has, since his retirement, held visiting professorial appointments at several institutions of higher learning, including Yale and Wesleyan University in the United States.
He's married.