Today I Found Inspiration In...

No, I have not abandoned you! The idea is to learn something everyday. It doesn't matter if that something is old, all that matters is that ones learns it again and maybe the next time in a different way. There does, however, come a time when ones seeks and finds all the inspiration that they could possibly need.

Today I Found Inspiration In... Mr. Wole Soyinka

I discovered a picture of him lurking on the University's main page and I wanted to know more. This is what I found.

Wole Soyinka, Nobel prize-winning playwright, poet, and novelist, is considered by many to be Africa's finest writer. Born in Nigeria, his work serves as a record of twentieth-century Africa's political turmoil and struggle to recocile tradition with modern culture. Soyinka has published over 40 works in a career that spans five decades including most recently Mandela's Earth and Other Poems (1990), Art, Dialogue, and Outrage (1988), Isara: A Voyage Around Essay (1989), and The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis (1996).

Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta, near Ibadan in western Nigeria. After preparatory university studies in 1954 at Government College in Ibadan, he continued at the University of Leeds, where, later, in 1973, he took his doctorate. During the six years spent in England, he was a dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London 1958-1959. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller bursary and returned to Nigeria to study African drama. At the same time, he taught drama and literature at various universities in Ibadan, Lagos, and Ife, where, since 1975, he has been professor of comparative literature. In 1960, he founded the theatre group, "The 1960 Masks" and in 1964, the "Orisun Theatre Company", in which he has produced his own plays and taken part as actor. He has periodically been visiting professor at the universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and Yale. During the civil war in Nigeria, Soyinka appealed in an article for cease-fire. For this he was arrested in 1967, accused of conspiring with the Biafra rebels, and was held as a political prisoner for 22 months until 1969. Soyinka has published about 20 works: drama, novels and poetry. He writes in English and his literary language is marked by great scope and richness of words.

Thank you to: New York State Writers Institute

Bliss Says: Mr. Soyinka only gives me the faith to keep pushing to move that mountain. I salute you, you are a keeper of the flame!