Kabura Zakama

Kabura Zakama (born 11 May 1964) is a Nigerian poet, veterinarian and an international development and humanitarian practitioner. His collection of poems, The Man Lived won the 1999 Association of Nigerian Authors ANA Poetry Prize. He has identified Birago Diop, Lenrie Peters, Tanure Ojaide and Kwesi Brew as the key influences on his poetry. In 1998, Zakama established Kairos Productions in order to publish upcoming writers. His poetry is well received across Africa and beyond. Quotes Whenever I go through an intense emotional experience (good or bad), the words pour out with my sweat. At other times, the words barely trickle through. That is the easy part. The hard work is when my perfectionist tendency kicks in and the revision never stops. Then I perform the poem in the privacy of my room (much like singing in the shower). When I get tired of reading, revising, performing and staring at the poem, it is finished. I am the cat that cuddles and purrs but unleashes its claws for the dignity of man! I don’t think any of my poems would save anybody’s life, but if it could, it’d be mine! The ink in my blood is part of my collection of poems, The Man Lived. It is the poem that kills me in order to save me. Africa is the seed from which the world sprouts. Africa is nourisher of the earth. Forget this savagery against Africa now, the world is a child of Africa. The child will come to honour and nurture the mother if it (the child) is to live on. Tanure Ojaide, Birago Diop and Lenrie Peters are the biggest influences on my poetry. We have come home by Lenrie Peters remains my most fascinating poem. Every time I read this poem, I get fresh energy from it! It is, to me, the experience of Africa’s struggle from which I find inexhaustible courage to break away from the despair of it all and then to ask ‘no favour of the world/But to have dignity.’ External links Category:Living people Category:1964 births Category:Nigerian writers