Kgositsile, Keorapetse

Description

Writer and performance artist Keorapetse Kgositsile delivered a lecture on 11/16/1971 (2015-0002/RR206). Kgositsile was a South African poet and essayist who focused on the racial inequalities in the US and Africa, especially in regard to Apartheid. Being an outspoken member of the African National Congress and a writer for the political magazine, New Age, Kgositsile began a self-imposed exile in 1961. Writing for the publication, Spearhead, in Tanzania for a year, Kgositsile relocated to New York City from 1962-1975. While there, he graduated from Columbia University with a Master’s of Fine Arts, taught at various universities, and became heavily invested in jazz and black theatre as a way of representing African Americans in the arts. Returning to Tanzania in 1975, Kgositsile began teaching English at the University of Dar es Salaam until he finally returned to South Africa in the early 1990s due to the beginning of the end of Apartheid. Although Kgositsile returned to the US for a number of teaching appointments, he settled in Johannesburg in 2001 and was named the countries poet laureate in 2006. Some of Kgositsile’s publications include Spirits Unchained (1969), For Melba (1970), My Name Is Afrika (1971), The Present Is a Dangerous Place to Live (1974), Places and Bloodstains (1975), When the Clouds Clear (1990), If I Could Sing (2002), and This Way I Salute You (2004). He also edited The Word Is Here: Poetry from Modern Africa (1973).

Record Contributed By

Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library

Record Harvested From

Connecticut Digital Archive