Niyi Osundare

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Niyi Osundare is a Nigerian poet, playwright, linguist, and literary critic born on 12 March 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria. His poetry is inspired by Yoruba oral traditions and blends them with styles from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe.

Osundare earned a BA in English from the University of Ibadan, an MA from the University of Leeds, and a PhD from York University in 1979. He taught at the University of Ibadan, becoming Professor and Head of English, and later joined the University of New Orleans in 1997. His notable works include Songs of the Marketplace (1983), The Eye of the Earth (1986), Waiting Laughters (1990), and Green: Sighs of Our Ailing Planet (2022).

Osundare has won many awards, such as the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize (1986, 1989, 1994), the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (1986), the NOMA Award (1991), the Tchicaya U Tam'si Prize for African Poetry (2008), and the Nigerian National Order of Merit (2014). He is married to Kemi and they have three children. In 1997 he moved to the University of New Orleans. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he and his wife spent 26 hours in their attic before being rescued, and they later settled in New Hampshire where he taught at Franklin Pierce College. A 2016 documentary, The Poets, features him and Sierra Leonean poet Syl Cheney-Coker on a road trip across Sierra Leone and Nigeria.