Biographie de Odiedo Stephen
In poems, plays and novels my writing dramatizes individuals confronting the fearsome might of the almighty African state in 3rd Millennium Africa: the fearful drama of lives violently torn apart on the urban African landscape - lives caught at the crossroads of modern Africa. I write on the tragic drama of lives cast adrift by the death of an anchoring ancient tradition killed by the triumphal march of the fearsome African state.
AFRAHA https://books2read.com/u/mdWjZl is the drama of lives dominated by the tragic irony that the almighty African state, the new secular god welcomed with so much hope and fanfare at independence in the last millennium, is now this fearsome monster devouring all: the "enemies of the state." As the ironic "withering of the state" gathers pace, uprooted Africans are rushing back into the past to resurrect a monstrous version of a long rejected tradition - shattering lives outcast from tradition and targeted as "enemies" by a vengeful remorseless African state unrestrained neither by tradition (discredited) nor by constitutional law (elitist, effete, ineffectual against the state).
My play TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE (https://books2read.com/u/bpjyrX) was the 1st Prize Award winner of the DAILY NATION NEWSPAPER 1995 playwriting competition. My plays have been shortlisted on BBC African Performance and BBC International Playwriting Competition. OSIRIS OF THE SLUMS - submitted to the BBC International Playwrights Competition was a finalist for the 1999 BBC International Competition.
Since my play TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE won the 1st Prize Award in the DAILY NATION NEWSPAPER playwriting competition I have continued to write poems, plays and novels thanks to the favour of the Muse herself, IMANNA of Splendour.
BARAKOA, sonnets on COVID-19, is my latest work.
BARAKOA ( https://books2read.com/u/31qGpa) is a sonnet sequence on the catastrophic effects of the COVID-19 epidemic in Siaya. BARAKOA examines beliefs which (against medical reality) frightened humanity resorts to in a time of plague and the dread fears it rouses.
I thank flame-haired Imanna Goddess for her kindness.
