Kofi Anyidoho
Kofi Anyidoho (born 25 July 1947) is a Ghanaian poet and academic who comes from a family tradition of Ewe poets and oral artists. 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. Biography. Born in Wheta, in Ghana's Volta Region, Anyidoho was educated in Ghana and the USA, and holds  a B.A. Honours degree in English & Linguistics from the University of Ghana, Legon, an M.A. in Folklore from Indiana University Bloomington and gained his PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. 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 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. Writing. Anyidoho's academic writing includes: