Pio Zirimu (died 1977) was a

Ugandan }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The southe ...

linguist, scholar and literary theorist. He is credited with coining the word "orature" as an alternative to the self-contradictory term, "

oral literature Oral literature, orature or folk literature is a genre of literature that is spoken or sung as opposed to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used vary ...

""Notes towards a Performance Theory of Orature"
ohio.edu, 3 September 2007. Retrieved 31 May 2014. used to refer to the non-written expressive African traditions. Zirimu was also central in reforming the literature syllabus at

Makerere University Makerere University, Kampala (; Mak) is Uganda's largest and oldest institution of higher learning, first established as a technical school in 1922. It became an independent national university in 1970. Today, Makerere University is composed of ni ...

to focus on African literature and culture instead of the English canon.Simon Gikwandi, Evan Mwangi (2013). ''The Columbia Guide to East African Literature in English Since 1945'', p. 177. Oxford University Press. .

Early life and education

Zirumu was born in

Buganda Buganda is a Bantu peoples, Bantu kingdom within Uganda. The kingdom of the Baganda, Baganda people, Buganda is the largest of the traditional kingdoms in present-day East Africa, consisting of Buganda's Districts of Uganda, Central Region, inclu ...

. He attended high school at

King's College Budo King’s College Budo is a mixed, residential, secondary school in Central Uganda (Buganda). Location The school is located on Naggalabi Hill, in southern Wakiso District, off the Kampala-Masaka Road. This location lies approximately , by road, ...

, and subsequently went to

college, and the

University of Leeds , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

, where he was a contemporary of

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (; born James Ngugi; 5 January 1938) is a Literature of Kenya, Kenyan author and academic who writes primarily in Gikuyu language, Gikuyu and who formerly wrote in English language, English. He has been described as having bee ...

. While at Makerere, Zirimu met Ugandan poet and dramatist Elvania Namukwaya Zirimu. They were to marry a few years later. The marriage produced a daughter.

Teaching

Zirimu later taught at the Institute of Languages Studies at Makerere University, where he was involved in the formulation of standards for judging emergent African literature in the 1960s. He was at the

African Writers Conference In June 1962"The First Makerere African W ...

held at Makerere on 1 June 1962 — officially called a "Conference of African Writers of English Expression", which was the first major international gathering of writers and critics of African literature on the African continent.Frederick Philander,
"Namibian Literature at the Cross Roads"
''New Era'', 18 April 2008. It was also attended by many prominent African writers, including

Chinua Achebe Chinua Achebe (; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as the dominant figure of modern African literature. His first novel and ''magnum opus'', ''Things Fall Apart'' (1958), occupies ...

Wole Soyinka Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka (Yoruba: ''Akínwándé Olúwọlé Babátúndé Ṣóyíinká''; born 13 July 1934), known as Wole Soyinka (), is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded t ...

John Pepper Clark John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo (6 April 1935 – 13 October 2020) was a Nigerian poet and playwright, who also published as J. P. Clark and John Pepper Clark. Life Born in Kiagbodo, Nigeria, to an Ijaw father and Urhobo mother, Clark received his ...

Ezekiel Mphahlele Es'kia Mphahlele (17 December 1919 – 27 October 2008) was a South African writer, educationist, artist and activist celebrated as the Father of African Humanism and one of the founding figures of modern African literature. He was given the ...

Bloke Modisane William Modisane (28 August 1923 – 1 March 1986), better known as Bloke Modisane, was a South African writer, actor and journalist. Biography William "Bloke" Modisane, the eldest son of Joseph and Ma-Willie Modisane,Nelly E Sonderling (e ...

Lewis Nkosi Lewis Nkosi (5 December 1936 – 5 September 2010) was a South African people, South African writer, who spent 30 years in exile as a consequence of restrictions placed on him and his writing by the Suppression of Communism Act and the Publicat ...

(then known as James Ngugi),

Robert Serumaga Robert Bellarmino Serumaga (1939 – September 1980) was a Ugandan playwright. He was also an important political figure in Uganda during the late 1970s, being the leader and co-founder of the Uganda Nationalist Organization militant group and M ...

Rajat Neogy Rajat Neogy (December 17, 1939 – December 3, 1995),Paul Theroux ''The Independent'', 15 January 1996, a Ugandan of Indian Bengali ancestry, was a writer, poet and publisher. In Kampala in 1961, at the age of 22, he founded '' Transition Magazine' ...

(founder of ''

Transition Magazine ''Transition Magazine'' was established in 1961 by Rajat Neogy as ''Transition Magazine: An International Review''. It was published from 1961 to 1976 in various countries on the African continent, and since 1991 in the United States. In recent y ...

''),

Okot p'Bitek Okot p'Bitek (7 June 1931 – 19 July 1982) was a Ugandan poet, who achieved wide international recognition for '' Song of Lawino'', a long poem dealing with the tribulations of a rural African wife whose husband has taken up urban life and wis ...

and

David Rubadiri James David Rubadiri lukin Hendricks (19 July 1930 – 15 September 2018) was a Malawian diplomat, academic and poet, playwright and novelist. Rubadiri is ranked as one of Africa's most widely anthologized and celebrated poets to emerge after ind ...

.John Roger Kurtz
''Urban Obsessions, Urban Fears: The Postcolonial Kenyan Novel''
Africa World Press, 1998, pp. 15–16.

Published works

*"An approach to Black Aesthetics", in *"Oracy as a tool of development", in with

Austin Bukenya Austin Bukenya (born 10 February 1944) is a Ugandan poet, playwright, novelist and academic administrator."Definitions and understandings of oral literature""Uganda Poetry Anthology 2000. (Uganda)."
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pio Zirimu 1977 deaths Ugandan writers Makerere University academics Makerere University alumni Year of birth missing