Agbor Dancer

                          John Pepper Clark

Clark, also known as Johnson Pepper Clark Bekederemo, was born on April 6, 1935, in Kiagbodo, Nigeria. He is the son of Clark Fuludu Bekederemo, an Ijaw tribal leader, and his wife, Poro. Clark received his elementary education at three different primary schools in the 1940s. He went on to a government college, Ughelli, and earned his Cambridge School Certificate in 1954. He then got his Bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Ibadan.
While in school, Clark and a group of fellow students founded the Horn, a publication for which Clark served as editor and where he began to publish his poetry.  In 1960 Clark wrote his first dramatic work, Song of a Goat, which was staged in Ibadan the following year.( Read more here)

AGBOR DANCER
 by John Pepper Clark

See her caught in the throb of a drum

Tippling from hide-brimmed stem
Down lineal veins to ancestral core
Opening out in her supple tan

Limbs like fresh foliage in the sun

See how entangled in the magic

Maze of music
In trance she treads the intricate
Pattern rippling crest after crest
To meet the green clouds of the forest

Tremulous beats wake trenchant
In he heart a descant
Tingling quick to her finger tips
And toes virginal habits long
Too atrophied for pen or tongue

Could I, early sequester'd from my tribe
free a lead-tether'd scribe
I should answer her communual call
Lose myself in her warm caress
Intervolving earth, sky and flesh

  The dance symbolizes the poet’’s yearning to be identified with the root. The poet is fascinated with this aspect of his culture which engages the dancer in an act of cultural dance. The dancer contrasts sharply with the poet as the dance signifies her deep knowledge of and involvement in her culture and understanding of cultural music. The poet describes the dance as ‘magic maze’ with its ‘intricate pattern rippling crest after crest’ Early separation makes the poet to respond to the appeal or communal call OF this infectious music.  His frustration is shown at the end of the poem.