KEORAPETSE KGOSITSILE & THE BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT, poetics of possibility

211pp., illus., paperback, First SA Edition, Johannesburg, 2024

First published in the UK in 2024.

Phalafala on "the foundational influence of Kgositsile's mother and grandmother on his craft and ... the importance of the oral/aural traditions, indigenous knowledge systems, and cosmologies he carried with him into and after exile ... Using the original concept of 'elsewhere', the author maps the sources of Kgositsile's transformative verse, which in turn generated 'poetics of possibility' for his contemporaries in the Black Arts and Black Power Movements and beyond - among them Maya Angelou, Larry Neal, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tom Dent, members of The Last Poets, Otabenga Jones & Associates, and rapper Earl Sweatshirt - who all looked to his work to model their identities, cultural movements and radical traditions."

South African Tswana poet, journalist and political activist Keorapetse Kgositsile (1938-2018), also known by his pen name Bra Willie, was an influential member of the African National Congress in the 1960s and 1970s. He was inaugurated as South Africa's National Poet Laureate in 2006.

Uhuru Portia Phalafala is a Senior Lecturer at Stellenbosch University, author of the poetry collection Mine Mine Mine (2023), and co-editor of Keorapetse Kgositsile: Collected poems 1969-2018 (2023).