'The most lyrical of the Nigerian poets'

-Encyclopaedia Britannica

Described as 'the main animating force of African poetry', JP Clark is indeed a great poet, the pre-eminent poet of a unique period of the 20th century in Africa during which a few of his generation created on the continent, side by side with others of their kind in French and Portuguese, a new literature in English.

'Universally acknowledged to be one of Africa's foremost authors... a poet and playwright of the first rank in both original and expressive power.'

- Robert Wren 

'Clark's work... can be said to have assumed a specific historical significance in the evolution of Nigerian, and indeed African poetry in English, for it is indisputable that his early efforts were central to both the thematic re-orientation and profound transformation of idiom that led to the decisive advance that the new poetry came to represent... Clark helped to inaugurate a new kind of Nigerian poetry in English.'

- Abiola Irele