South African poet visits ULL on Thursday

LAFAYETTE — Keorapetse “Willie” Kgositsile, poet laureate of South Africa, will visit the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and read from his work at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Ernest J. Gaines Center on the third floor of the Edith Garland Dupré Library.

According to a university news release, “Kgositsile is an internationally renowned poet, literary figure, and activist who lived in the United States from 1962 to 1975. … Though he was exiled from South Africa for 29 years, he returned near the end of apartheid and the political triumph of Nelson Mandela.”

Kgositsile is a special adviser to the South African Minister of Arts and Culture and is a founding member of the African National Congress Veterans League.

The university is a stop on the South African poet’s U.S. reading tour, which began in March and concludes later this month. The tour also included scheduled readings at the Library of Congress, New York University, Columbia, CUNY Graduate Center, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon, Rutgers, Brown and Vanderbilt.

This event is sponsored by the Ernest J. Gaines Center, the ULL SGA Lyceum Committee, the Friends of the Humanities, the ULL English Department and the Edith Garland Dupré Library.

Edith Garland Dupré Library is at 400 E. St. Mary Blvd.