JP Clark: Poet, Dramatist and Mascot By Kolade Mosuro

JP Clark and his friend, Kolade Mosuro. Photo credit: Vanguard

JP Clark came visiting and it was going to be an overnight stay. I had bought two bottles of wine to stretch the evening. And a third bottle, in case we wanted to go the extra mile. I was reasonably prepared for three – JP, Tolani and I. Tolani, my wife, had gone all out and the dinner table was all laid out with a great spread.
We commenced dinner at about 7.00pm and, in no time, one of the bottles had fallen. Plied by wine, we were having a great time. JP had stories. He had lived in the village, Kiagbodo; in the town, Ughelli; in the city, Ibadan; and in the mega-city, Lagos. He had travelled the world. He had lived and featured in the nation’s interesting periods and kept an encyclopedic memory of the times. Between the cities and the periods, we talked literature and the wine generously flowed. JP was the greatest poet of our time, a raconteur; it was a blessing and special privilege to have him in the house.
Still at the table at 10pm, Tolani wisely left us to continue the conversation. She went to bed. JP and I continued to engage in full force. He had a manuscript in mind that I was going to be publishing. By 11pm, we were on the third bottle and I was hardly on my feet. I was reasonably assured that being in my house, if the stairs suddenly became too steep to climb, or the house began to sway to the breeze of the night, I would find sleep in the sofa in the living room without disturbing any of the artifacts in the house. By about midnight, the third bottle had fallen and I thought that should announce the end of the day. JP then looked at me and asked, ‘Kolade, don’t you have drinks in this house?’I never felt so small despite all my preparation for the evening. I scampered blindly into the store and found a bottle of unfinished whisky. I was not particularly fond of strong liquor; a tot was good enough in good company if the company demanded it. This night, the whisky was a saviour and I whisked it to the table. JP talked more literature which at this point sounded Greek to me. I could barely stay on my feet. When the whisky bottle was empty, I rose with all the little sense left in me to announce that I was going to bed. JP walked sprightly to his room while I staggered, moiling to mine. It was 2.00am and I felt pretty rotten. The next morning, I had a terrible hangover. My head was pounding, my eyes were blood-shot, my feet quaked, and suddenly JP emerged from his room, all dressed up, fresh as a daisy. It was a memorable visit for all the literature we shared and the evening that accompanied it. Mark it, if I can recall this much of the evening, I could not have been totally worse for it. It was a grand evening.
In publishing the book that he raised at dinner, we tossed the manuscript back and forth, thirteen times, so much so that my colleagues were beginning to complain that the finesse from JP was excessive. I explained that poetry is a very deliberate and delicate genre. The words have got to be precise, the punctuation has got to sit comfortably for the author was compressing his thoughts into the smallest of space. I remember vividly that on the twelfth editorial exchange, I called him to say that the correction was now final. He disarmed me by sending the manuscript back to me with a poem. The finality of the deadline had stirred something in him, and he wrote a poem as follows:
Note to my Publisher
(Wanting proofs, final)
 
Death,
Alone, outside of faith,
Is final; all our acts on earth
Being, from birth,
By trial and error till that last breath. (Remains of a Tide Pg 64)
When the book was done, I sent him six advance copies. Three days later, he called. He found a couple of commas sitting in the wrong places. He did not want them. We had to destroy the whole lot and reprint a corrected version. Such was JP’s fidelity, his fastidiousness, driving his craft to the ultimate, always in search of excellence. Early in 2019, Prof Femi Osofisan and I honoured a longstanding invitation to visit JP Clark in his village, Kiagbodo. It was Osofisan’s second and my fourth. JP’s residence sits stunningly at the confluence of two flowing rivers with thick vegetation jutting to the river’s edge. Surrounded by water, to get home, JP would summon a boat or a canoe from his residence or have one in wait on anchor at the riverbank. On every canoe ride, I would sweep my hand across the water. It was a soothing balm. I had seen the river at ebb tide and low tide, flowing gently with its unique sound, with fish looping out of the water and dipping in, creating an endless circle of waves. The croaking sound of frogs was everywhere, water lilies made a bed of the river and birds skated on the water, flip-flopping into the air. The air around was free and it opened JP to his innermost thoughts. He returned to Kiagbodo, again and again; for the free expansion of life, he returned home. The serenity of the place always left me breathless and again, it inspired a poem in him.
Again A Note to my Publisher
(who sees a village the haven)
Where is there to run?
From the word go,
Whichever way we turn,
We end in the same embrace,
Breathless (More Remains Pg 105)
I have always observed every time I visited that the villagers, on paddling their canoes past his residence, bowed their heads and paid him respectful homage. His influence and those of his brothers, Edwin Kiagbodo Clark and Blessing Akporode Clark, they knew. For their world, he was beloved to them for his disposition and kindliness. They appreciated him for his lack of airs, his ability to mix with the village like any other helmsman with a paddle under his armpit. They recognized and adored him. These were seafaring folks, going to the farms, markets or the next village, but they knew he had brought honour beyond the sea, far and far away beyond into other lands, another world. They knew they would find him seated on the porch as they paddled in the morning to undertake their daily chores. They would return in the evening and find him there, still moored to the porch, a book in hand or writing away or looking out to the river or just simply gazing, letting his imagination wander. Their hearts were filled with gratitude, just seeing him. He had done them proud. He was as beloved to his community as he was to the literary community for the wealth of his intellect.
For this visit, we knew we would be treated to several fish dishes. Surrounded by water, we knew the fish would come close to play in our hands, but nothing prepared us for the picture he showed us of the catch for our visit. It was a monstrous fish, ejaosan, seven feet long. We had never seen anything like it before. The fish was hacked to be cooked and we were prepared to eat it with garden fork and axe.JP was ready for our visit and we had not come to play. My underlying quest on this visit was simply to observe him, and if possible, dig into the root of his greatness.I kept a pad in hand and an observatory ear to learn. He took us to his ancestral homes, much of which we knew through his poetry. This time, we were in the presence of his heritage. We went to Government College, Ughelli, his alma mater, there we stood by the statue of its founding principal, V.B.V. Powell—Cambridge graduate and former Principal, Government College, Ibadan. The statue bore down on us and JP looked up in awe. JP regaled us with stories of his upbringing, his schooling in the village and at Ughelli, the University of Ibadan, his literary awakening, his foray into journalism and his return to academic life. We followed his life trajectory and my quest was served.

JP Clark hosted us with a monstrous fish, ejaosan, seven feet long.

After three days with him, I came to my conclusion. There was love in the house that brought him up and it came from the women, particularly the grandmothers; there was discipline, discipline by parents, particularly a father, who took a tough line; in his father’s house were aspiring minds and JP tagged along with his brothers; Government College Ughelli offered lofty aspirations. He was tutored by teachers who took education with a missionary zeal, and let him loose. He read and read, outside the box, till the very end. Poetry brought him extraordinary joy. He found a marital home that tamed him.
These, to my mind, made his alchemy and remained the heart of his greatness. Poetry took a special place in his works. He found lyricism in everything. At some point, his wife said‘this one’, meaning JP, poetry will kill him. Thereupon, JP responded with a poem.
Fear of Poetry
Poetry, at the rate he is going on,
Will surely kill this one,
My wife tells her doctor friend,
A professor, retired like herself.
She had just lost her husband
Of decades solid beyond gold.
Years after we all put mortar and gown
Aside to sweat it out in town;
This prince of cool airs,
His wife proudly said, would every day
Wake up at five to play golf,
All the eighteen holes of the game;
At home, boardroom and a club, all self.
If art, indeed, as says my wife, was to blame
For the records doctors say
My heart once broke, it almost stopped their own,
What is their more to move her man?             (More Remains Pg 23)
His closing days had been spent in Lagos, forced on him by the corona lockdown. Faced with a choice between Apapa and Lekki, he chose to stay in an apartment in Lekki. Apapa was unreachable, unpassable and undrivable.JP was full of lamentations and so he wrote.
Apapa
All others closed down already,
They can’t clear their way to the one port of entry;
Yet each claims control of a country (More Remains Pg 80)
His last publication, More Remains, was scheduled to be launched in March and we aligned the presentation with stars, with Wole Soyinka as chairman. Then we put it forward till May because of the coronavirus pandemic; still, the virus was raging and everywhere was on lockdown. Since then we have not been able to gather physically to celebrate anything, much less literature. JP had a habit of calling me twice a week, just to chat and the chat invariably led to one poem or the other. When I did not hear from him after two weeks, I called and was assured that though under the weather, his health was in good control. And then one day a call came in and it was JP. No, it was his daughter passing one of his last instructions to me. I insisted that JP wouldn’t speak to me through a proxy. I had to talk to him. The phone was handed over to him and he labored to talk to me. He had written that when the call comes, the news will spread, he wrote:
JP Clark, poet, dramatist and mascot
For old masters at home, is dead… and now at the gate of peace.
The great poet, perhaps the most luminous of them all.
When he died, Prof Ebun Clark, his wife, called and she said, you know, Kolade, JP was such a simple man. I replied that that indeed was his greatest attribute. It is not easy to be simple.
 -Kolade Mosuro is the owner and Managing Director of The Booksellers in Ibadan.

This article was specifically written for and published by TheNEWS magazine as a special tribute editon commemorating the life and times of the recently deceased poet, Professor J.P. Clark-Bekederemo. It is reproduced with the kind permission of TheNEWS.
 

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