KGOSITSILE, KEORAPETSE

born Sept. 19, 1938, Johannesburg, S.Af. in full Keorapetse William Kgositsile South African poet and essayist whose writings focus on Pan-African liberation as the fruit of informed heroism and compassionate humanism. Kgositsile's verse uniquely combines indigenous South African with black American structural and rhetorical traditions. Kgositsile attended Madibane High School in Johannesburg and wrote for the subsequently banned political weekly New Age. He began a self-imposed exile in 1961 in Dar es-Salaam, Tanzania, writing for Spearhead magazine. From 1962 to 1975 he lived in the United States, first as a graduate student and then as a teacher or poet-in-residence at various universities. He then returned to Tanzania to lecture in English at the University of Dar es-Salaam. Kgositsile's poetry includes Spirits Unchained (1969), For Melba (1970), My Name is Afrika (1971), The Present Is a Dangerous Place to Live (1974), Places and Bloodstains (1975), and Herzspuren (1981; Traces of the Heart). He also edited The Word Is Here: Poetry from Modern Africa (1973).