Kofi Anyidoho (born 25 July 1947) is a

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...

ian

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

and academic who comes from a family tradition of Ewe poets and oral artists."Kofi Anyidoho (Ghana)"
UNESCO. He is currently Professor of Literature at the

University of Ghana The University of Ghana is a public university located in Accra, Ghana. It the oldest and largest of the thirteen Ghanaian national public universities. The university was founded in 1948 as the University College of the Gold Coast in the Br ...

."Profile of Prof. Kofi Anyidoho"
,

Institute of African Studies The Institute of African Studies on the Anne Jiagee road on campus of the University of Ghana at Legon is an interdisciplinary research institute in the humanities and social sciences. It was established by President Kwame Nkrumah in 1962 to encou ...

, University of Ghana. He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including the Valco Fund Literary Award, the Langston Hughes Prize, the

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Arts and Africa Poetry Award, the Fania Kruger Fellowship for Poetry of Social Vision, Poet of the Year (Ghana), and the Ghana Book Award.

Biography

Born in Wheta, in Ghana's

Volta Region Volta Region (or Volta) is one of Ghana's sixteen administrative regions, with Ho designated as its capital. It is located west of Republic of Togo and to the east of Lake Volta. Divided into 25 administrative districts, the region is multi-et ...

,"Anyidoho, Kofi"
ProQuest Biographies, 2006. Anyidoho was educated in

and the

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, and holds a B.A. Honours degree in English & Linguistics from the

Legon Legon , a suburb of the Ghanaian city Accra, is situated about north-east of the city center in the Accra Metropolis District, a district in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. Legon is home to the main campus of the University of Ghana. Ghanaia ...

, an M.A. in Folklore from

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana University and, with ...

and gained his

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in Comparative Literature at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

. Having trained as a teacher at Accra Training College and at the Advanced Teacher Training College-Winneba, he taught primary, middle and secondary school, before joining the University of Ghana-Legon. Currently the Professor of Literature in the English Department, he has also been Director of the

CODESRIA The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is Pan-African research organisation headquartered in Dakar, Senegal. The current President of CODESRIA is Dzodzi Tsikata. Background CODESRIA was established in 19 ...

African Humanities Institute Program, acting Director of the School of Performing Arts and Head of the English Department. He was installed as the first occupant of the Kwame Nkrumah Chair in African Studies at the University of Ghana on 18 March 2010.

Poetry

Kofi Anyidoho's poetry is respected as distinct in the way he weaves modernity into tradition and inspires hope by extending the three-chord rope of Ewe oral tradition. He not only writes with the background of Ewe oral tradition experiences but also enacts the very performance and oration of his poems in griotic style. * ''Elegy for the Revolution'' (1978) * ''A Harvest of Our Dreams'' (1985), Heinemann (paperback 1998), * ''Earthchild'' (1985), Woeli Publishing, * ''Ancestral Logic and Caribbean Blues'' (1992), Africa World Press, * ''Praise Song for the Land: Poems of Hope & Love & Care'' (2002). Foreword by

Kofi Awoonor Kofi Awoonor (born George Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor-Williams; 13 March 1935 – 21 September 2013) was a Ghanaian poet and author whose work combined the poetic traditions of his native Ewe people and contemporary and religious symbolism to depict A ...

* ''The Place We Call Home and Other Poems'' (2011)

Writing

Anyidoho's academic writing includes: * ''The Pan African Ideal in Literatures of the Black World'', Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1989 * ''Transcending Boundaries: the diaspora experience in African heritage literatures'', Evanston: Northwestern University, 1995 * ''The Word Behind Bars and the Paradox of Exile'', Northwestern University Press (1997), * Kofi Anyidoho and James Gibbs (eds), ''Fontomfrom. Contemporary Ghanaian Literature, Theatre and Film'', Editions Rodopi B.V. (2000), * Poetry as Dramatic Performance in

Tejumola Olaniyan Tejumola Olaniyan (April 3, 1959 – November 30, 2019) was a Nigerian academic. He was the Louise Durham Mead Professor of English and African Cultural Studies, and the Wole Soyinka Professor of the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madi ...

and

Ato Quayson Ato Quayson (born 26 August 1961) is a Ghanaian literary critic and Professor of English at Stanford University. He was formerly a Professor of English at New York University (NYU), and before that was University Professor of English and inaug ...

's African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory

References

Sources

* Simon Gikandi, ''Encyclopedia of African Literature'', Routledge (2002), p. 24, . * Dominic Head, ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'', Cambridge University Press (2006), p. 35, .
"Poetry Africa Festival"
Centre for Creative Arts,

University of KwaZulu-Natal The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) is a university with five campuses in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. It was formed on 1 January 2004 after the merger between the University of Natal and the University of Durban-Westville. ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Anyidoho, Kofi 1947 births Living people Ghanaian male poets Ewe people 20th-century Ghanaian poets 21st-century Ghanaian poets International Writing Program alumni 20th-century male writers 21st-century male writers Indiana University Bloomington alumni Ghanaian expatriates in the United States