Princely is a poet based in Dar es Salaam Tanzania.
Princely
Tiro Sebina
Tiro Sebina teaches courses in Literary Theory and Criticism at University of Botswana. He also coordinates (UB) Writers’ Workshop on Wednesday evenings. His poems appear in a number of anthologies and journals. He coaches Creative Writing on Friday afternoons at the Gaborone Public Library’s Children’s Section. Besides contributing occasional book reviews, he intermittently writes opinion columns in some newspapers in Botswana.
Nompendulo Shabangu
Nompendulo Shabangu, a.k.a. Nomps, recalls writing poems for her mother for Mothers’ Day from the time that she was in primary school. She has been blessed with phenomenal English teachers all the way from pre-school. Nomps is a writer of short stories, poetry, and she also has her own blog.
Nomps is a Motswana, yet she was raised in South Africa. All of her works are inspired by God. Her writings are about God, love, and justice; three topics that are inseparable. She believes that through her writings, poems, and performances, she gets to be an advocate, a voice for the voiceless and to also offer up hope to the hopeless. She aims to raise awareness about the social ills and current affairs, and in turn mobilize her audience to proaction. She also aims to spread love, and to help instill purpose.
Nomps is a member of Poetavango Spoken Word poetry, and she performs at their events. She has performed at the 2014 Maun International Arts Festival, and the Barona Gratitude Gala in Maun in May 2015. Even though Nomps performs in English, she also writes Zulu and Xhosa pieces.
Keorapetse Willie Kgositsile
Professor Keorapetse Willie Kgositsile, considered one of South Africa’s most distinctive poetic voices since the l960s, is South Africa’s National Poet Laureate. Gwendolyn Brooks, the late poet laureate of Illinois, said of Kgositsile’s work almost forty years ago:
I would say that he is a ‘master’, if it were not for my belief that no one ‘masters’ anything, that each finds or makes his candle, then tries to see by the guttering light. Willie has made a good candle. And Willie has good eyes.
Kgositsile left South Africa in 1961 as one of the first young cadres of the African National Congress (ANC) instructed to do so by the leadership of the national liberation movement. While doing his MFA at Columbia University in 1969 he started teaching literature and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. He has also taught at a number of other universities and colleges in the USA, including: Queens College, Bennett College, State University of New York at Stonybrook, University of Denver, Wayne State University, New School for Social Research, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1975 he returned to Africa and taught at a number of universities, including: the universities of Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Fort Hare.
Professor Kgositsile has worked in various departments and structures of the ANC, both above and underground. He was one of the founding members of the ANC’s Education Department (1977), and the Department of Arts and Culture (1982). He was also a founding member of the ANC Veterans League in 2009 and was a member of the ANC National Centenary Task Team.
He was Special Adviser to former Ministers of Arts and Culture, Mr. Z. Pallo Jordan and Mr. Paul Mashatile.
Kgositsile is one of the most widely published South African poets. His work has been translated into many languages. He has been the recipient of a number of literary awards, among them: the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize; the Harlem Cultural Council Poetry Award; the Conrad Kent Rivers Memorial Poetry Award; the Herman Charles Bosman Prize. In 2008 he was awarded the National Order of Ikhamanga: Silver (OIS).
BOOKS PUBLISHED:
THIS WAY I SALUTE YOU – Kwela Books & Snailpress, Cape Town, 2004
IF I COULD SING – Kwela Books & Snailpress, Cape Town, 2002
TO THE BITTER END – Third World Press, Chicago, 1995
APPROACHES TO POETRY WRITING – Third World Press, Chicago, 1994
THE PRESENT IS A DANGEROUS PLACE TO LIVE – Third World Press, Chicago, 1993
WHEN THE CLOUDS CLEAR – COSAW Publications, Johannesburg, 1990
FREEWORD (with Katiyo, Davis, & Rydstrom,eds.) – Writers’ Bookmachine, Stockholm, 1983
HEARTPRINTS – Schwifstinger Galerie-Verlag, 1980
PLACES AND BLOODSTAINS – Achebe Publications, San Francisco, 1976
A CAPSULE COURSE IN BLACK POETRY WRITING (with G. Brooks,
H. Madhubuti, D. Randall, eds.) – Broadside Press, Detroit, 1975
THE WORD IS HERE (ed.) – Doubleday, New York, 1973
MY NAME IS AFRIKA – Doubleday, New York, 1971
FOR MELBA – Third World Press, Chicago, 1970
SPIRITS UNCHAINED – Broadside Press, Detroit, 1969
Gary Cummiskey
Gary Cummiskey is a South African poet and publisher living in Johannesburg. He is the editor of Dye Hard Press, which he started in 1994.
He is the author of several poetry chapbooks, including Romancing the Dead (Tearoom Books, Durban 2009), Sky Dreaming (Graffiti Kolkata, India 2011) and I Remain Indoors (Tearoom Books, Stockholm 2013). In 2009, he published Who was Sinclair Beiles?, a collection of writings about the South African Beat poet, co-edited with Eva Kowalska. An expanded and revised edition of the book was published in 2014.
Also in 2009, Cummiskey compiled Beauty Comes Grovelling Forward, a selection of South African poetry and prose published on the US literary website Big Bridge.
His debut collection of short fiction, Off-ramp, was published in 2013 and was short-listed for the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award in 2014.
His work has been translated into French, Greek and Bangla.
He is currently editor of the South African literary journal New Coin.
Dan Wylie
Dan Wylie teaches English at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. He has published two books on the Zulu leader Shaka (Savage Delight: White Myths of Shaka and Myth of Iron: Shaka in History, both UKZN Press); a memoir; Dead Leaves: Two Years in the Rhodesian War (UKZN Press); and several volumes of poetry. Most recently, he has concentrated on Zimbabwean literature and on ecological concerns in literature. He founded the annual Literature & Ecology Colloquium in 2004, and edited the collection of essays, Toxic Belonging? Identity and Ecology in Southern Africa (Cambridge Scholars Press). His latest publications are Elephant and Crocodile, both in the Reaktion Books animals series, and Slow Fires (poems with etchings by Roxandra Britz; Fourthwall Books).
Robert Berold
Robert Berold has published four collections of poetry and four books of non-fiction. As editor of New Coin from 1989 to 1999, he sought out and published much of the groundbreaking new poetry being written in that period, later editing a selection of these into the anthology It All Begins. He has edited over 40 books by South African poets, several of them published under his Deep South imprint. For most of his working life he has been a rural development worker and a freelance editor of technical books. Currently he coordinates the MA programme in creative writing at Rhodes University.
Motion
“Moving the soul, like she rocks the mic, Motion is a true testament to the power of words.” -Toronto Star
MOTION’s aural/sonic works span the realms of word, sound and drama. Her lyrical agility has taken her to the stages of Manifesto, the Caribbean International Literary Festival, Toronto’s Nuit Blanche, CBC Television, Illinois Hip Hop & Punk Feminisms Symposium, Trinidad & Tobago’s Cascadoo Festival and HBO Def Poetry Jam. Her theatrical works have been staged at Factory Theatre, bcurrent’s Rock.Paper.Sistaz Festival, Buzz Festival at Theatre Passe Murialle and Obsidian’s International Black Playwrights Festival.
Motion is Resident alumna of the renowned Canadian Film Centre, and has been Obsidian Theatre’s Playwright-in-Residence, and a resident of the Banff Centre for the Arts’ Playwrights Colony in 2013, where she developed the dramatic suite 4OUR WOMAN. Her award-winning production ANEEMAH’S SPOT debuted at Summerworks 2012. She went on write the critically acclaimed site-specific theatrical co-creation NIGHTMARE DREAM, which premiered in the 2014 TD Then & Now Festival. The 2nd work in the Nightmare Dream trilogy BECAUSE I LOVE YOU, will have its main stage premier in the 2014-2015 Season. Her inter-disciplinary play ORALTORIO, and films SOUNDGIRL and Aneemah’s Spot are now in development.
Motion has published two collections – Motion in Poetry and 40 Dayz (Women’s Press). Her work has also been featured in Give Voice (Playwrights Canada), The Great Black North (Frontenac), and In the Black: New African Canadian Literature (Insomniac).
Inspired by her initiation as an arts/mentor with the legendary Fresh Arts Movement, MotionLive continues developing young and emerging talent through her presentation/ workshop series in community, creative and educational spaces such as South Africa’s Africa Expo Symposium, Tapestry Theatre, the AMY Project, Trinidad & Tobago’s Cascadoo Festival, Toronto Public Library, York University and the TDSB. This year, Motion joins the Hip Hop Curriculum Project in the newly published Rhymes to Re-Education (A Different Publisher).
Connect:: www.motionlive.com
Jason Nkwain
Jason Nkwain was born in Cameroon, and moved to the USA at the age of thirteen. He has been publicly speaking since the age of seven when he started reciting poems and rhymes for kindergarten events.
Jason became really interested in poetry after moving to the US, and as time went by, he slowly developed a love for performance poetry or as most people call it, spoken word poetry. In 2012, alongside some of his close Cameroonian friends, he co-founded LEGACY ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCTIONS, which is a collective of African artist whose main focus is to elevate and expose the beauty and the brilliance of the African Art.
Jason Nkwain’s poems focus on the continent of Africa and especially its people. Looking at the African people through the eyes of an anthropologist, Jason seeks to expose the beauty in Africa’s story. Jason seeks to dispel most myths and to shatter the false His-Stories, creating room for the truth in Our-Stories.
Some of his well-known poems are Thoughts, and Have You Ever Seen An African Dance.
Jason Nkwain is currently a senior at The University of Maryland College Park double majoring in Geographical Information Systems and English. He hopes to become an English professor some day focusing on African studies.
Website: https://www.facebook.com/Legacy237
Kafui Adjaye-Gbewonyo
Kafui Adjaye-Gbewonyo is a Ghanaian-American, currently based in Boston, Massachusetts. She has enjoyed writing poetry since childhood. Her poetic work has appeared in California State University, Bakersfield’s literary journal, Orpheus. She was also recognized by the Live Poets Society of New Jersey as an American High School Poets Regional Winner in 2002 and was one of the recipients of the Edward Eager Memorial Fund Prize for Poetry at Harvard University in 2007.
Kafui is currently pursuing a Doctor of Science degree in social and behavioral sciences at Harvard Chan School of Public Health. Her other interests include music and issues related to development, globalization, Ghana, and Africa in general.
Issa Kone
Issa Kone is a poet and retired teacher born in 1951 in Saint-Louis, Senegal. He started writing poems in the 70’s when he was still a student. He was the very first winner of the FIPIA (Festival Itinérant de Poésie Internationale en Afrique) poetry competion in 2008.
Rethabile Masilo
Rethabile Masilo blogs at Poéfrika and co-edits Canopic Jar. He is a Mosotho poet from Lesotho and enjoys reading and writing. Today he lives in Paris, France, with his wife and two children. His work has been published in various hard and soft-copy magazines, including Canopic Jar.
Rethabile was born in 1961 in Lesotho and left his country with his parents and siblings to go into exile in 1981. He moved through the Republic of South Africa (very short stay, on account of the weight of apartheid), Kenya and the United States of America, before settling in France in 1987.
In 2012 his first book of poems, Things That Are Silent, was published by Pindrop Press. The second book, Waslap, will be published in 2015 by The Onslaught Press.
Zeinixx
Dieynaba Sidibé, known as Zeina or Zeinixx, is a slam poet, visual and graffiti artist from Senegal.
Zeinixx is a self-taught artist who started painting in 2004 at the tender age of 14. In 2009 she became the very first female graffiti artist. Renowned Senegalese graffiti artist Grafixx al Mukhtar has mentored her since the beginning of her career, and as homage to him she named herself Zeinixx, which is a fusion of her name Zeina and his name Grafixx.
Zeinixx has performed and exhibited her work at both local and international festivals.
DéLana Dameron
DéLana R. A. Dameron holds a B.A. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has a strong interest in the intersections of history and literature. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, PMS: PoemMemoirStory, 42opus, storySouth, Pembroke Magazine, and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review. She has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation and Soul Mountain and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective. Dameron, a native of Columbia, South Carolina, currently resides in New York City.
Fatou Dioffé Bâ
Born in the 1988 on Saint-Louis in the Senegal, Fatou Dioffé Bâ first started dabbling in poetry in college. Although she is a graduate of a Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics, Computer Science and Finance, poetry is her number one passion.
Enyam Scandalocks
Enyam Scandalocks is both an actor and a poet. He is a philosophy graduate from the University of Lomé in Togo. He is widely recognized as the forefather of Slam poetry in his home country.
Edgar Munguambe
Edgar Munguambe is a Mozambican spoken word artist and aspiring writer with an international perspective. In 2013 he graduated both with a Bachelor’s degree in Media, Communication & Culture from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, and an Honours degree in African Studies from the University of Cape Town. Edgar believes his degrees helped develop his research and analytical skills, as well as flexibility which are vital particularly with regard to his passion – the creative arts.
He writes in both Portuguese and English, about issues that personally affect him; matters of the heart, death and the human condition, stereotyping, alienation, and success are among his themes.
Edgar has performed at various spoken word gigs throughout Maputo, particularly at Noites de Poesia (Poetry evenings) organized by cultural movement Pl’Art D’Alma. He participated in the “The Power of Voice” festival organized by the British Council. Due to the positive feedback on the content of his lyrics, wordplay and delivery with his resounding bass, Edgar decided to take his poetry to new heights.
Internationally he participated in the 2014 Poetry Africa Festival in Durban, South Africa. He will also be featured on Noites de Poesia’s first Anthology featuring local Mozambican spoken word artists, which will be published in 2014.
Professionally, in 2014 he became a candidate of the Barclays graduate programme, a prestigious pan-African development program where he will train as an analyst.
Deanna Rodger
Deanna Rodger is an actor and spoken word poet. She is the youngest UK Poetry Slam Champion (2007/8) and completed vocational acting training in The National Youth Theatres (NYT) REP Company 2012.
She has written and performed as a poet and actor in 2012 Olympic Team Welcome Ceremonies (NYT commission), Buckingham Palace (NYT commission), Speakers House (NYT commission), 10 Downing street (somewhere to_ commission) and Honey Coated Dream (Lyric Hammersmith commission) as well as delivering two TedX performances (Southwark and EastEnd). She has recently completed the audio book recording of ‘Feral Youth’ by Polly Courtney and is currently writing her one woman show ‘LondonMatter’ which has received support from POP Productions (IdeasTap, Sky Arts), Roundhouse Camden, The Albany and the Arts Council.
She is co founder of two popular spoken word events Chill Pill and Come Rhyme With Me (Spread the Word, New Writing South) and is in poetry collectives: Point Blank Poets (Biennale UK Artist International award 2011) and Keats House Poetry Forum, as well as leading on Podium Poets (Spread The Word) and workshops in and around the UK.
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Naledi Agatha Ntini
Naledi Agatha Ntini was born in 1974 in Mpumalanga, South Africa. She performs her poetry mainly at community gatherings, weddings and memorial services. In 2007 she was invited to take part in the 13-part television show, Voices of Africa. iMphumlanga a praise poem for her province is her most celebrated poem. Her work has been anthologised in Tivunguvungu and Bantu Letters. Naledi is nurse by profession, a mother to two boys and a wife.
Collin the Bushman
Collin the Bushman is an Attaqua bushman from a town called Dysselsdorp, on the outskirts of Oudsthoorn. He grew up in the Boland, Worcester area.
A poet, artist, bushman-blues/folk singer and musician, he is passionate about what he does. Part of his journey has been to rediscover his Khoikhoi roots. Living in a culturally diverse South Africa has inspired Collin to theme his work under the bushman heritage and culture.
Collin has been in the music and poetry industry since 1995. He started out in the hip-hop scene with the help of Black noise, P.O.C, Brasse van die Kaap, and Hip crew. He started out as a B- boy/MC, the culture of self-expression through music & art really inspired Collin to voice issues that were and are still relevant today. The issues addressed in his music & poetry are mostly around cultural & community awareness.
In 2011 Collin met up with rapper/artist/performer Jitsvinger, which led him to also working with the great spirit Jethro Louw aka Tannaman !xam. Combining his work with Jitsvinger and Jethro really took the poetry to a whole new level of Khoikhoi-culture awareness.
Makosha Valencia Dimo
Born and breed in the South African province of Limpopo, Mmakosha is a multi-talented artist who practices various art forms including singing, acting, and writing and reciting poetry. She has performed across numerous stages around the country. She is also the admin officer for The Polokwane-based, Timbila Poetry Project, alongside renowned South African poet Vonani Bila.
Keith Oleng
Keith Oleng also known as K.O.K.O is a 29 year old poet, performer and creative director from Kenya.
His journey into the arts started when he was in the theatre arts club at Kakamega High School, where he learned about theatre directing, acting and creative writing. He then went on to study mass communication and film arts in Cetral TAFE College [Australia] and New York Film Academy [USA].
Later he started a communication organization called Oleng Communication, which focuses on understanding and communicating the interests of young people in Africa.
His first poetry collection, titled LOVE, Taken to a Mysterious Place is available for free download on his artist website.
Dawn Garisch
Dawn Garisch has had five novels, a collection of poetry Difficult Gifts and a memoir/popular science work Eloquent Body published. Both short stories and poetry have been published in anthologies, journals and magazines. She has had a short play and short film produced, and has written for television and newspapers. Three of her novels have been published in the UK.
In 2007 her poem Blood Delta was awarded the DALRO prize. In 2010 Trespass was short-listed for the Commonwealth prize for fiction in Africa, and in 2011 her poem Miracle won the EU Sol Plaatjie Poetry Award.
Her interest in interdisciplinary work in all art forms and psychology has led to her running both memoir writing and creative method courses. She is a practising medical doctor and lives in Cape Town.
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Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyunva
Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyunva is the founder of Beverley Nambozo Poetry Award and Babishai Niwe Literary Foundation which means Creating with You, in a mixture languages. It Babishai Niwe has been coordinating annual poetry awards for Ugandan women since 2008 targeting hundreds of women country-wide over the past 5 years, being the only award o its kind in the country. In 2014, the award will extend to the entire continent, targeting both men and women. In 2013, the foundation will publish an anthology of poetry from poets of Africa. Beverley Nambozo is also the author of Unjumping, a chapbook collection of poetry which was published by erbacce-press in 2010 after she emerged a joint first runner-up in their annual poetry competition. She has a Masters Degree from Lancaster University and devotes a lot of time to being a stay-at-home mum. Beverley currently lives in Kampala and looks forward to travelling far corners of the world with her husband and children.
Bongiwe Dlamini
Bongiwe Dlamini was born in Swaziland on the 29th of September 1973, and grew up in Simunye in the Lowveld. While in Swaziland, she engaged with people from all parts of the continent and the world; Swaziland was during the 70s and 80s an alternative destination and exile for many due to Apartheid in South Africa. She relocated to Johannesburg in the 90s and began performing professionally as a musician in Johannesburg in 1995.
Whilst living shortly in Italy, she sang in a cruise ship for six months, coming down from Italy, though, Israel, Egypt, Seychelles, Mauritius, Madagascar and South Africa. Bongiwe is a member of the Trio Spirits Indigenous, a Afrocentric musical group that has performed in several spaces in Mbabane, at the Bushfire Festival and at the Grahamstown Cape Town. The other band members are Thobile Magagula and Gcebile Dlamini. Bongiwe has chosen Maputo as her creative base, where she now lives.
Breyten Breytenbach
The work of Breyten Breytenbach includes numerous volumes of poetry, novels, and essays, many of which are in Afrikaans, many translated from Afrikaans to English, and many published originally in English. In 2000, Breytenbach published Lady One: Of Love and Other Poems, a collection of poems for his wife that includes images of east Asia, southern Africa, and Morocco. The combination of the personal and the global in the poems reflects a marriage that, because it was considered taboo under South African apartheid laws, led to the poet’s original exile.
Known as the finest living poet of the Afrikaans language, Professor Breytenbach’s verse volumes include The Iron Cow Must Sweat (1964) and Footscript (1976) and they feature rich visuals, a powerful use of metaphor, and a complex blending of references from Buddhism, Afrikaans idiomatic speech, and recollections of the South African landscape. He has been honored with numerous literary and art awards, including the APB Prize, CAN Award (five times) Allan Paton Award for Literature, Rapport Prize, Hertzog Prize, Reina Prinsen-Geerling Prize, Van der Hoogt Prize, Jan Campert Award and Jacobus van Looy Prize for Literature and Art.
Mwalim Morgan Peters
Mwalim (Morgan James Peters) is a Black Wampanoag performing artist, writer, educator and filmmaker. Born in the Bronx, NY and raised in both the Bronx and Mashpee, MA, Mwalim was immersed in the oral traditions of both his Bajan (Barbados) mother and Mashpee Wampanoag father.
Emerging on the east-coast spoken-word scene in the early 1990’s as a storyteller, performance poet and theater artist, Mwalim’s work is known throughout the USA, Canada, the UK and the Caribbean. A contributor to numerous edited volumes and periodicals, Mwalim is the author of one short fiction collection, A Mixed Medicine Bag (2007, Talking Drum Press) and over 25 plays, and several sound recordings. His latest CD, The Liberation Sessions features collaborations with a host of A-List artists. He is a tenured Associate Professor of English and African/ African American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Mbizo Chirasha
Mbizo Chirasha is an acclaimed wordsmith, performances poet, widely published poet and writer. He is the Founder and Creative Director of several creative initiatives and projects, including Young writers Caravan Project, This is Africa Poetry Night 2006 – 2008, Zimbabwe Amateur Poetry conference 2007 – 2010, African Drums Poetry Festival 2007, GirlChildCreativity Project 2011- Current, GirlchildTalent Festival 2012.
The widely traveled poet and creative projects consultant is widely published in more than 60 journals, anthologies, websites, reviews, newspapers, blogs and poetry collections around the world. Some of the countries he traveled include Ghana, Sweden, Egypt, Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Malawi.
The poet have done a number of official NGO creative interventions and consultancy programmes with Social Family Health (Namibia 2009 – 2010) on a HIV/Aids Documentary Project, Catholic Relief Services Zimbabwe 2006 on a HIV/Aids Nutrition Project, Swedish Cooperative Centre 2006 on Arts against Drought (Zimbabwe).
His writings are published in Canada, Germany, Norway, South Africa, Turkey, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Zimbabwe, America, India, Wales, London, Nigeria and other countries. He co-authored Whispering woes of Ganges and Zambezi with Sweta Vikram from New York in 2010. His poetry collection Good Morning President was published by Diaspora publishers UK in 2011.
In 2001- 2003 Mbizo was the Membership Drive officer for Budding writers Association of Zimbabwe. In 2000 was Outreach Agent for Zimbabwe Book Development Council, Delegate of Zimbabwe international Book fair to Goteborg international book fair /Sweden in 2003, Delegate of Zebra publishing House, Namibia to Unesco Photo Novel Writing Project in Tanzania 2009, Poet in Residence of International Conference of African Culture Development in Ghana 2009,Producer/Coordinator of I am the Artist project, an Artist in Residence program by Zimbabwe Germany Society /Goethe Zentrum.
He holds Writing Skills and Editorial Expertise certificates courtesy of BWAZ/SAIH-Norway. Mbizo works as a poet/writer in residency, Readership and literacy culture development Advocate, Media Relations Strategist, Live Literature Producer and Creative Projects Consultant.
Mbongeni Nomkonwana
Mbongeni Nomkonwana is an actor, playwright, theatre director, poet and sometimes standup comedian who has performed at the former Vodacom Funny Festival (2007) now Jive Funny Festival.
This multi-talented performer is always willing to try new things and has special gift with words. He started his performing, writing and directing career at Sophumelela Theatre Group where he still is to date. He holds a performing Arts Certificate from New Africa Theatre Academy (2007). He has written and directed four plays for them which one of them Bendingazi was performed at the 2009 National Arts Festival.
He has acted in two international films alongside Kiefer Sutherland and Hakim Kae Kazeem, he has done some local cameo roles with penguin films. He has done children’s theatre with Arepp Theatre for Life (2010-2011) touring the Eastern Cape and is now working for Okuhle Media doing educational school roadshows.
Winner of Cape Town DFL LOVER+ ANOTHER poetry challenge, he has since then performed at OFF THE WALL poetry sessions and Inzync Poetry by Stellenbosch University, 2012 HEAIDS Conference at UCT, Jam That Session, Brand House Marketing Campaign and Last Poet’s: Rhythm Poetry1.
Co-Founder of a Cape Town based poetry and music movement, Lingua Franca. In 2013 he teamed up with Lwanda Sindaphi to coordinate the Poetry for the annual Zabalaza Theatre Festival at Baxter Theatre.
He also teamed with Linda Kaoma to coordinate the 2013 DFL Lover+Another Poetry Challenge.
Nandi Nothando Mabel Khumalo
Nandi Nothando Mabel Khumalo became a poet under the teachings of Mr Edmund Mhlongo of Ekhaya Multi Arts Company in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa.
In 2008 she performed at the IIC for the former President Thabo Mbeki sharing the stage with the famous Lady Smith Black Mambazo, and also appeared on SABC1’s SHIFT, Street Journal by Night and on Izwi Labantu.
During 2010-2013 she coordinated for Durban International Film Festival.
During the FIFA world Cup 2010 South Africa Nandi was one of the program directors for the Durban North Beach Fan Park.
She owns her own company called Legends of Purpose which promotes artists in her province.
Kneo Mokgopa
Kneo was born and raised in Johannesburg, with a mother who built a home for him and his siblings out of nothing. His mother raised him with considerable effort and some comfort but he had to find his own feet, and as such he is studying law at the University of Cape Town. His poetry emerged from his love of love, philosophy and history, as well as his experience of being a part of the liminal class of the ‘born frees’.