Timothy Ogene


Timothy Ogene is a poet and novelist. He is the author of Descent & Other Poems and The Day Ends Like Any Day.

Biography

Born in Nigeria, Timothy has since lived in Liberia,, the United States and England. His work has appeared in Tincture Journal, Numero Cinq, One Throne Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Harvard Review, Hong Kong Review of Books, Glasgow Review of Books, Tahoma Literary Review, The Missing Slate, Stirring, Kin Poetry Journal, Mad Swirl, Blue Rock Review and other places. He holds a first degree in English and History from St. Edward's University, a Master's in World literatures in English from the University of Oxford, and a Master's in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He is a PhD Candidate in English at the University of Cambridge, and was recently a Visiting Research Fellow at Brown University.
Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, he was shortlisted for the 2010 Arvon International Poetry Competition, and his collection, Descent & Other Poems, was included in the Australian Book Review's Books of the Year 2016 and was also listed as a Literary Hub favourite for 2017.
Of his poetry, Felicity Plunkett writes: "Timothy Ogene’s poems are writings of witness, displacement and beauty. Instead of a home address there are poems as address, at once exquisitely gentle and acute. The sharpness of the poems’ blades—whether literal, like the blades that peel Cassavas and leave the speaker's arms scarred, or deeper injuries of trauma and loss—sits alongside their subtlety and tenderness. These are poems of deep attentiveness to the smallest encounters, and to the largest questions of love, doubt, solitude and migration. Their crafting reveals Ogene's deep reading, both of poetry and of the landscapes the poems explore. How do poems that bear witness to violence, loss and displacement open so gently to the reader? This paradox is one of many in these wise, important poems. I am reminded of Hélène Cixous’s description of Paul Celan’s poetry as ‘writing that speaks of and through disaster such that disaster and desert become author or spring’. Where trees hold ‘time in absent leaves’, these poems mourn roots but refrain from ‘easy paths’, offering, instead, the force and grace of a numinous poetics."
In 2008, Timothy was among those selected to participate in the first Jane Goodall Global Youth Summit, and in 2009 he was awarded a Dekeyser & Friends Fellowship by the Dekeyser & Friends Foundation.
While living in Liberia, Timothy was a mentor at the Strongheart Fellows Program, "an innovative educational program to help exceptional young people from extremely challenging backgrounds rise above circumstance and excel in our larger shared world." He also volunteeered part-time teaching literature at Robertsport High School in Grand Cape Mount County.