Biography
Keorapetse Kgositsile was born in 1938 in South Africa, and was a founding member of the African National Congress Department of Education and Department of Arts and Culture.
He left the country in 1961 and from 1962-1975, lived in the US as a student then teacher at various Universities, extensively studying African-American literature and culture and developing a deep interest in jazz. His first poetry collection, Spirits Unchained, was published in 1969, and in 1971, his influential collection My Name is Afrika established him as a leading African-American poet. He also became well-known for his performances in jazz clubs in New York City and his significance in the Pan-African movement. He returned to Africa in 1975, lecturing in English at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
After the end of Apartheid, he returned to South Africa in 1990 and settled in Johannesburg. When the Clouds Clear (1990) was his first book to be published in his native country. His selected poems If I could Sing was published in 2002. He has also written a book about writing poetry – Approaches to Poetry Writing (1994) and edited The Word is Here: Poetry from Modern Africa in 1973.
Kgositsile was Vice President of the Congress of South African Writers in the early 1990s and also founded the Black Arts Theatre in Harlem. In 2006, he was appointed the second Poet Laureate of South Africa.
