Kofi Anyidoho

June 25, 1947

Wheta, Ghana

Kofi has become an associate professor at the University of Ghana and served as director of its School of Performing Arts. Anyidoho began publishing poems while he was still training as a teacher. In 1976 he obtained a poetry award from the Valeo Fund for the unpublished collection that became Brain Surgery. Mensah reported that the significance of this volume “is in what it reveals of the poet’s first real attempts to find his voice as an African poet writing in English.” Among the poems in this collection, which was eventually published in 1985 as Earthchild, with Brain Surgery, are “A Dirge for Christmas,” in which he describes his homeland as a barren, despairing place devoid of hope; “Go Tell Jesus,” wherein he protests what he sees as the annihilation of African values through Christian colonialism; and “The Rise of the New Poet,” in which he advocates social change and a renewal of African culture. Mensah called Brain Surgery “a precocious collection that promises the coming harvest.” In 1978 Anyidoho realized his first publication. Elegy for the Revolution, a somber work that reflects the instability of Ghana’s political climate. The collection includes such poems as “Oath of Destiny,” wherein he decries what he perceives to be the destructively hypocritical nature of Christians; and the title work, where he considers the death of a student who was shot during a worker's strike at the University of Ghana. Another key poem in the volume is “Dance of the Hunchback.” in which Anyidoho depicts a pitiful cripple who struggles to maintain his dignity despite his physical disadvantage and the consequent scorn from others. Mensah writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, lauded “Dance of the Hunchback” as “an excellent illustration of Anyidoho’s ability to express in English the mood of the traditional dirge.” In his next poetry book, A Harvest of Our Dreams, with Elegy for the Revolution, published in 1984. Anyidoho produced a dynamic series of poems relating the turbulent times in Ghana, where the military had assumed control in 1979. Derek Wright commented in Contemporary' Poets on the volume’s “raw vigor and imagistic power,” while Mensah reported in the Dictionary of Literary Biography that the poems are well served by being read aloud. The collection includes “Mythmaker,” wherein Anyidoho laments Ghana's violent times and writes “our scholars, deployed from campuses / into ghost communal farms, / walked the streets at dawn like zombies / peddling posters proclaiming final obsequies / for the revolution that went astray.” Mensah stated that “Mythmaker” is intended “to be heard rather than merely read silently to oneself.” In his ensuing poetry collection, Earthchild, with Brain Surgery, Anyidoho collects several poems written during his time in the United States. He is currently Professor of Literature at the University of Ghana.

Kofi Anyidoho Edit Profile

academic poet

Background

Kofi Anyidoho was born in 1947 in Ghana.

Education

Kofi trained in education and eventually taught at elementary and secondary schools. He also attended the University of Ghana, earning an undergraduate degree in 1977, and then traveled to the United States, continuing his education at Indiana University, where he received a master's degree in 1980, and the University of Texas, Austin, from which he secured a doctorate in 1983.

Career

Kofi has become an associate professor at the University of Ghana and served as director of its School of Performing Arts.

Anyidoho began publishing poems while he was still training as a teacher. In 1976 he obtained a poetry award from the Valeo Fund for the unpublished collection that became Brain Surgery. Mensah reported that the significance of this volume “is in what it reveals of the poet’s first real attempts to find his voice as an African poet writing in English.” Among the poems in this collection, which was eventually published in 1985 as Earthchild, with Brain Surgery, are “A Dirge for Christmas,” in which he describes his homeland as a barren, despairing place devoid of hope; “Go Tell Jesus,” wherein he protests what he sees as the annihilation of African values through Christian colonialism; and “The Rise of the New Poet,” in which he advocates social change and a renewal of African culture. Mensah called Brain Surgery “a precocious collection that promises the coming harvest.”

In 1978 Anyidoho realized his first publication. Elegy for the Revolution, a somber work that reflects the instability of Ghana’s political climate. The collection includes such poems as “Oath of Destiny,” wherein he decries what he perceives to be the destructively hypocritical nature of Christians; and the title work, where he considers the death of a student who was shot during a worker's strike at the University of Ghana.

Another key poem in the volume is “Dance of the Hunchback.” in which Anyidoho depicts a pitiful cripple who struggles to maintain his dignity despite his physical disadvantage and the consequent scorn from others.

Mensah writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, lauded “Dance of the Hunchback” as “an excellent illustration of Anyidoho’s ability to express in English the mood of the traditional dirge.”

In his next poetry book, A Harvest of Our Dreams, with Elegy for the Revolution, published in 1984. Anyidoho produced a dynamic series of poems relating the turbulent times in Ghana, where the military had assumed control in 1979. Derek Wright commented in Contemporary' Poets on the volume’s “raw vigor and imagistic power,” while Mensah reported in the Dictionary of Literary Biography that the poems are well served by being read aloud. The collection includes “Mythmaker,” wherein Anyidoho laments Ghana's violent times and writes “our scholars, deployed from campuses / into ghost communal farms, / walked the streets at dawn like zombies / peddling posters proclaiming final obsequies / for the revolution that went astray.” Mensah stated that “Mythmaker” is intended “to be heard rather than merely read silently to oneself.”

In his ensuing poetry collection, Earthchild, with Brain Surgery, Anyidoho collects several poems written during his time in the United States.

He is currently Professor of Literature at the University of Ghana.

Achievements

Kofi Anyidoho is among the most notable African poets writing in English. A. N. Mensah, writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, affirmed that since the appearance of Anyidoho’s first volume of verse in 1978, “with each subsequent published collection, he has strengthened his claim to preeminence among African poets of English expression.” Mensah added, “As a poet he belongs to that select group of verbal craftsmen and craftswomen who have successfully fashioned a distinctively African voice out of that ambivalent legacy of colonialism, the English language.”

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.