Kofi Anyidoho

Kofi Anyidoho (born 1947) is a Ghanaian poet and academic who comes from a family tradition of Ewe poets and oral artists. He was educated in Ghana and the U.S., gaining his Ph.D. at the University of Texas. He is currently Professor of Literature at the University of Ghana.

He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including the Valco Fund Literary Award, the Langston Hughes Prize, the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award, the Fania Kruger Fellowship for Poetry of Social Vision, Poet of the Year (Ghana), and the Ghana Book Award.

Poetry

• Elegy for the Revolution (1978)
• A Harvest of Our Dreams (1985) - Heinemann (paperback 1998), ISBN 0-435-90261-X
• Earthchild (1985) Woeli Publishing, ISBN 9964-970-72-2
• Ancestral Logic and Caribbean Blues (1992) Africa World Press, ISBN 0-86543-265-1
• Praise song for the land: poems of hope & love & care (2002)
• 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), ISBN 0-8101-1393-7
• Kofi Anyidoho and James Gibbs (ed.), Fontomfrom. Contemporary Ghanaian Literature, Theatre and Film, Editions Rodopi B.V. (2000), ISBN 90-420-1273-0

Sources

• Simon Gikandi, Encyclopedia of African Literature, Routledge (2002), ISBN 0-415-23019-5 - p. 24
• Dominic Head. The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, Cambridge University Press (2006), ISBN 0-521-83179-2 - p. 35
• Centre for Creative Arts, University of KwaZulu-Natal "Poetry Africa Festival"