Nadine Aisha

Nadine Aisha is the author of Still, a debut poetry pamphlet exploring women’s stories and women’s survival.

She is active in the movement to end gender-based violence, and works creatively with young people to educate and empower. She has blogged for a number of Scottish organisations about feminism and violence against women, and has worked with young people to create theatre exploring sexual violence. She has been published by the Dangerous Women Project, performed solo shows at both the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the social justice Just Festival, and is currently the writer in residence for YWCA Scotland’s #FeministFest 2016.

Born in the UK, Nadine Aisha is of mixed heritage and had a Zimbabwean-meets-Indian-meets-Yorkshire upbringing. Her favourite quote is from Angela Davis: ‘walls turned sideways are bridges’.

Susie Berya

Susie Berya is a Tanzanian living in Dar es Salaam. She is a creative writer, and a feminist with a passion for all forms of art. She’s a 24 years old currently studying for her Bachelor’s degree in Economics of Development and working on her first anthology. She writes contemporary poetry usually influenced by her daily experiences and social issues.

Demere Kitunga

Demere Kitunga is a feminist activist and advocate for literacy. She engages with literature and knowledge generation in various forms and through it mentor young people to become free thinkers and creative communicators.

She is the head of E&D Readership and Development Agency popularly known as Soma (synonym for read and learn in Kiswahili), a not for profit outfit which runs Soma Book Café, a literary hub for leisure, culture and learning.

She shares her poems individually and in relevant platforms including: Tanzanian and African feminist collective; Fanani Flava, Kisima cha Mashairi (an online poetry collective); and Waka Poetry Consortium. Her published poems include but are not limited to: a translation into Kiswahili of A new Initiation Song by Elizabeth Khaxas first published in Sister Namibia; and a few in Diwani ya Kisima Juzuu la I a Swahili anthology I co-edited with Kahabi Isangula published online (available on Amazon).

Elsa Mugeta

Elsa Mugeta was born on the 15th of April in 1990 in a city called Debre Birhan, Ethiopia. Elsa started writing poetry to help better navigate through and adapt to a new environment when she had to study at Gondar University.

For Elsa poetry is a shadow of emotion, with poetry she can better reflect her joys as well as her sorrows.

Thato Angela Chuma

Thato Angela Chuma is a Motswana singer, poet and writer. Her poetry has featured in literary magazines such as Saraba Magazine, Brittle Paper, Strange Horizons, The Stare’s Nest and The Kalahari Review.

Justine Kakoko

Justine Kakoko, known to many as Brother GSP, is a passionate poet and Pan-Africanist living in Southern part of Tanzania. This 23 year old is a student at the University of Dodoma pursuing Bachelor of Arts and Public Administration.

He was inspired to start writing poetry by likes of Amiri Baraka, Last Poets, Mutabaruka, Alicia Walker, Saul Williams, his Comrade George Kyomushula and other many more.

Although, he does not get many opportunities to perform his work due to the lack of poetry events in his town he is determined to continue writing.

Kopanang Tito

Kopanang Tito lives in Kweneng District, Botswana. He is the author of several Setswana poetry collection published by Macmillan. He usually performs at community events, weddings, funerals and cooperative shows. He has been the Thamaga constituency regional champion poetry for the past three years. He is also the 2015 national champion for the poetry category.

Siyabonga Ngcai

Siyabonga Ngcai, better known as Gqobhoz’imbawula, is an ambitious poet, story teller, song writer, performing artist and Architectural Technologist by profession, born and raised in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. He grew up as a fine artist, Traditional and Pantsula dancer, and later found himself attached to writing short stories and poems.

Gqobhoz’imbawula writes his poetry in his mother tongue, isiXhosa, addressing matters concerning physical and emotional abuse against woman and children, African history, traditional and cultural backgrounds, and other pertinent stories involving the people in our communities. He has shared his craft in countless events, poetry festivals and musical sessions along with national and international artists.

Gqobhoz’imbawula represented the Eastern Cape in a Word’N’Sound Poetry and Live Music Series slam competition called Slam for Your Life in Grahamstown in 2014. He has also contributed his song entitled Ingoma from his album Ukholo lwemveli to the Current State of Poetry, SADC Love Poetry Mixtape which features amazing poets from different regions across the African continent. The mixtape was released on the 14th of February 2015 online for downloads on Bozza.mobi.

Ayanda Billie

Ayanda Billie works as a quality inspector in the motor industry in Uitenhage. His first book of poems was Avenues Of My Soul (2006). He is influenced by the haunting voices of South African poets like Ingoapele Mandigoane and Mafika Gwala, European poets like Lorca and Pessoa , and jazz music, particularly Zim Ngqawana. His isiXhosa poems record the chilling hours of the modern worker on the factory floor.

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

Thandokuhle S. Mngqibisa

Dr. Thandokuhle S. Mngqibisa is a performing poet, medical doctor and an activist for womyn’s issues born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in 1984. She studied medicine, completing her MBBCh early in 2011. The time & emotional commitment required for this, however, would never see her second-guessing her place in the performance poetry zeitgeist. The major themes of her written work centre around the issues of womyn in the setting of modern South Africa. She works intimately with womyn on a daily basis as a medical officer in obstetrics and gynaecology.

She discovered stage poetry in 2005 when she met and joined a 7 member poetry collective and inspiration, T.O…T! Together they introduced poetry to different audiences and challenged the status quo by performing fluid collaborative pieces that matched different styles of poetry and used the physical movement of 7 poets to tell a single story.

She has performed poetry for international movement to stop violence against womyn, One Billion Rising (2013, 2014). She was part of the cast of a workshopped theatrical poetry performance called Secret With the Moon; part of the Arts Alive festival (2013) and was invited to perform at the Melville poetry festival (2012).

She has judged various poetry slams like Word n Sound (2014), Drama For Life, Lover and Another (2013) and has helped in preparing prolific, talented poets for the stage for Drama for Life (2014) by conducting workshops to observe and guide their performance technique and discuss and impart knowledge on the subject matter–sex and sexuality.

She has a collection of published poems called One Big Word and has been published in an online magazine and in the Saturday Star lifestyle segment (2008?). She has performed her poems on various radio stations (VOW, ukhozi) and TV shows (etv sunrise, shiz niz, creations).

She has opened for Simphiwe Dana and shared stages with various successful artists like Lebo Mashile, Tu Nokwe, Myesha Jenkins, award-winning poets Phillippa Yaa de Villiers and Vus’muzi ‘Romeo the Poet’ Phakathi. She planned and hosted a poetry and discussion seminar called SPEAK for 16 days of activism.

She is a few months from completing her second collection of poems.

Mbasa Sigcau

Mbasa Sigcau, also known as Amazing the Slum Intellect, is a 20 year old emcee, poet and observer based in Grahamstown South Africa. He honed his writing style by studying the Durban underground rap scene. Most of his writing is deeply rooted in social commentary.

Thabiso Malepe

Thabiso Malepe is the co founder of Slum Literature,an audio visual poetry experience that fuses Slam Poetry with Hip Hop. It is rooted in social consciousness and seeks to tell the stories and illustrate the brilliance of where it originated, the township.

Stuart Thembisile Lewis

Stuart Thembisile Lewis is a journalist and filmmaker who moonlights as a poet. He was born in 1993, less than a year before South Africa’s first democratic election, and carries a massive chip on his shoulder for consistently being lumped together with the so-called ‘Born Frees’. He spends most of his time stuffing around on the internet

Xolisa Ngubelanga

Xolisa Ngubelanga born in Port Elizabeth is a playwright, actor and director responsible for the underground hit – Dinner with Bantu. He has a passion for availing the artistic experience for the marginalized from mainstream art outlets and is currently establishing a vibrant township theatre culture in Nelson Mandela Bay.

Founder of Mdali – a program to revive critical cultural activities among the youth in New Brighton. The program is to stimulate audience development for the arts through early exposure of the arts to the youth and empowers youth to become catalysts of community art experiences through creative and critical writing.

Lesedi Thwala

Lesedi Thwala is a 20-year-old female, born in Itsoseng but grew up in a small town called Lichtenburg in the North West Province. She is currently doing her first year of her Bachelor of Arts at Rhodes University. A die-hard feminist, Motswako rapper and recovering book worm, Lesedi’s love for poetry began as an escape from the challenges she faced in life until a friend discovered one of her poems and forced her to recite it for a group of people. Lesedi is passionate about South African literature and dreams of becoming an author someday.

Phomelelo Mamampi Moshapo

Phomelelo Mamampi Moshapo is a lover of words. Her poetry has been published in various volumes of the Timbila Poetry Project. She has contributed to an anthology of poetry by South African Women, Basadzi Voices (UKZN Press, 2006). She also published a Sepedi collection of poetry titled Peu tša tokologoIo (Timbila, 2005). She was also one of the featured poets in Throbbing Ink 2003, a poetry collection by six South African poets.

She has read her poetry on various stages including the following: Polokwane Literary Fair 2014, 95 Poems 95 Poets Long Live Madiba, Polokwane Literary Festival 2012, Poetry Africa 2007, and Grahamstown National Arts Festival 2005, as well as the Beyond Borders Literature Festival in Uganda 2005. Her writing is mainly social commentary.

She’s a mother to Gaositwe, Mukona, and Muwanwa; wife to Segopotso Moshapo; and she holds a degree in physiotherapy

Mmakgosi Ophadile Anita Tau

Mmakgosi Ophadile Anita Tau was born in  1989 in Botswana.
Her first poem was published in 1999, for a school magazine. In 2007 she won a poetry competition at the Monash University, and after this triumph she was asked to help head the Poetry Association of Monash. This role helped her secure  many opportunities such as, her performance at the Women’s Day Celebrations.

During her time in South Africa she performed at open mics held in places like House of Nsako in Bree, Shivas in Newtown and in Johannesburg.

Mmakgosi was featured on the Word Of Mouth-Audio compilation, and she is a member of the Poets Circle Movement and MO Scripts.

MO Scripts is a group advocating for growth and awareness in Botswana literature. they
have four mobile applications published for Android, Symbian, Blackberry and Java enabled phones and they can be downloaded free of charge. To date, more than 250 000 people have downloaded their app. For more on the applications please check out Facebook page MO Scripts: https://www.facebook.com/pages/MO-Scripts/338887719546526?fref=ts

Thabiso Nkoana

Born in Kagiso, raised in Diepkloof, polished in Scummyside and studying in Cape Town. Thabiso is a self proclaimed wordsmith exploring the multiverse one syllable at a time.

Hermann Kenfack

Hermann Kenfact was born and bred in Yaoundé Cameroon. Hermann is a poet, a writer and playwright. In 2008, he was the recipient of the best creator African by the APPIA (Association for the Protection and the Intellectual Property in Africa), he also received the 1st price for the African literature CREAYOUTH by l’OMPI (Organization mondial for the property intellectual).

Dorothea Smartt

Dubbed ‘Brit-born Bajan international’ by Caribbean literary icon Kamau Braithwaite, Dorothea Smartt is a poet and live artist. Her poetry braids together standard and Caribbean English; poetic form and speech rhythms; myth, history, observation and reflection. Her first collection Connecting Medium (2001, Peepal Tree Press) was highly praised and features poems from her outstanding performance works Medusa and From You To Me To You (An ICA Live Art commission). Her latest publication Ship Shape is a rich collection of poems, connecting past and present, presence and absence.

Her recent poetry video installation Landfall was part of an international exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands and featured new works exploring the Atlantic Ocean as a natural phenomenon and transporter of dreams and peoples. Dorothea Smartt performs, and exhibits internationally, and regularly works with schools. She is SABLE LitMag’s poetry editor, and Co-Director of Inscribe, a Black & Asian writer’s development program.

Loyce Gayo

Loyce Gayo was born in Tanzania and is currently pursuing a degree in African and African Diaspora Studies with a Minor in Mathematics at the University of Texas in Austin. Gayo’s time in the diaspora and her constant desire to go home has profoundly influenced her craft. Gayo was the Slam Champ of the UT Spitshine Poetry Slam team who won the 2014 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational in Boulder Colorado. Gayo currently serves as a member of the Austin TheySpeak Youth Slam that will be competing in the 2014 Brave New Voices in Philadelphia.

Centie Ambrose Ngubane

Centie Ambrose Ngubane was born in 1961 in Mpumalanga, South Africa. He has contributed to a number of anthologies which include Ligwalagwala by SS Mahlalela, Timfofo by BS Khanyile and Ingono 2 by MP Mavuso.

Ambluk Banda

Banda is the DCES for Quality Assurance under the Mpumalanga Department of Education.
He has been writing since 1977 and has since then published various articles, essays, books, and poems. His current collection of poetry entitled Poems and Stories from the Countryside, is due to be published in 2015.

Jacob Sam-La Rose

Jacob Sam-La Rose is a published poet who devises and facilitates projects for schools and other institutions, emerging poets, teachers, literature professionals and other creatives. His work is grounded in a belief that poetry can be a powerful force within a community, and that it’s possible to combine the immediacy of poetry in performance with formal rigour and innovation on the page. His work has been featured in a range of journals and anthologies. Breaking Silence (2012) is his first book length collection of poetry.

Matshedisho Aletta Motimele

Matshedisho Aletta Motimele has been writing poetry for over two decades. She is the author of Peu tsa lerato and Re thankgetse. This talented actor and playwright has also written for radio and television productions.

Titilope

When Titilope first stepped to the microphone in 2007 at a local open mic, to gracing stages from Lagos to Cape Town, New York to California, Edmonton to Toronto and places in between, her goal has been to remind people that the ties that bind us transcend all of the borders we have created. She will tell you that no poem is brand new. In the telling and re-telling we are reminded that someone has walked this path before.

Titilope is a Nigerian born civil engineer, author and spoken word poet and the winner of the 2011 Canadian Authors’ Association Emerging Author Award for her first collection of poems, Down To Earth. In 2013 Titilope released her first spoken word album Mother Tongue and her second collection of poetry, Abscess, in 2014 with Geko Publishing in South Africa.

She was a resident artist at the 2011 Yemoya Artist Residency under the mentorship of acclaimed Jamaican-Canadian Dub poet and educator, D’bi Young. She was the recipient of the 2013 RISE award for achievement in the arts and the 2014 National Black Coalition of Canada Fil Fraser Award.

She has featured on stages across Canada and internationally, performing with Sonia Sanchez, Jayne Cortez, Yusef Komunyakaa, Obiora Odechukwu, Bassey Ikpi, Twin Poets and Offiong Bassey, at the 2011 Achebe Colloquium on Africa at Brown University. In 2013, Titilope was selected from over 200 writers to meet legendary poet and author, Dr. Maya Angelou.

She is the creator of Rouge Poetry, a weekly open mic that has feature local and international poets and musicians for over 5 years. She is the founding member of the Breath In Poetry Collective, home of the 2011 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (CFSW) championship winning Edmonton Slam Team. Titilope also adds acting to her list of accomplishments, starring as Eki in the Ndani TV hit series, Gidi Up that will air across Africa in 2014.

Even with the soil of continents beneath her feet, the stories that are surer with each passing year, she has not forgotten where it all began. She will tell you it is simple; when your heart is cracked open and a multitude of words begin to leak from your chest, before you stain everything you dare to touch, put it in a poem.

Mxolisi Nyezwa

Mxolisi Nyezwa was born in 1967 in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth. He runs a public-phones business from a steel container in Motherwell township. Mxolisi is the founder editor of the cultural magazine Kotaz, now in its 15th year. He has published three collections of poetry, Song Trials (2000), New Country (2008), and Malikhanye (2011). Mxolisi still lives in New Brighton township, close to where he was born at 4 Madala Street.

Bilkis Moola

Bilkis Moola is an Educator who works as a Head of Department in Languages at a school in Vukuzakhe, a township located in Volksrust, Mpumalanga province, South Africa. Her first anthology of poetry Wounds & Wings evolved as an introspective quest for recovery from her personal narrative of an abusive relationship. Bilkis presently divides her time between professional responsibilities and post-graduate studies in Education.

Batsirai E Chigama

In 2006 when Batsirai started seriously performing her poetry she says there were only three women doing poetry readings at the time including herself. She was felt challenged to add her voice in the poetry circles therefore ventured into the slam community at the Book Cafe in Harare. She is passionate about lending her voice to the women whose voices have been silenced the world over.

Batsirai has performed at several festivals in the region including Harare International Festival of the Arts(HIFA), Intwasa Arts Festival, Thubalethu, Nguva Yedu Youth Festival, Arts Alive(SA), Sadc Poetry Festival(Botswana), Poetry Africa Tour, Tambo Tambulani Art Camp & Festival, Pemba, Mozambique, Shoko Spoken Word & Hip-Hop Festival and recently performed at the Hivos Poetry Cafe, Blantyre Arts Festival, Malawi.

In August 2010, Batsirai was featured in four anthologies published by Mensa Press in the USA: Whispers in the Whirlwind, War against War, Defiled Sacredness & Visions on Motherland. She is also featured in State of the Nation published by Conversation Paper-press in England. Several of her short stories have been published online and an extract from one of her short stories was published in “Writings from Africa” a publication facilitated by the British Council through the Crossing Borders Writers’ Project.

Batsirai also writes short stories and contributes to Zimbojam, the most popular arts website in Zimbabwe.

Ben Caesar

… and it seems that’s the state of our teens of today/ we grow up at such a pace/ we don’t get to touch base with the elders of our age/
Our history books are missing a page… Ma Island, June 2009

Ben Caesar Charles Le Roux (Ben Caesar) was born in 1985 in the Caribbean island of Dominica where he spent his early childhood. They moved to London and then to South Africa where they shuffled between Kwa Zulu Natal, Johannesburg and later Cape Town where he is currently settled. During his school years he travelled to Holland, UK, Switzerland, New York and Montreal and visited the Caribbean from time to time.

Growing up in such diversity, Ben states “I am fortunate to have been exposed to many different peoples, cultures, with varying sexuality’s, race and genders, it has broadened my horizons and perceptions which all feed into my music and perspective’s”.

He has released three albums, 2007, Eye of the Storm in 2008, and most recently LONDONE in 2009. He performs regularly at venues and gathering from clubs to festivals, celebrations to NGO Human Rights conferences including then ILRIG conference on globalisation, the Divinity clothing label launch, Bon Esperance Refugee Day celebration, the South African National Gallery, Muizenberg Community festival and has been the featured artist at “Verses” Poetry sessions in Zula Bar, Cape Town. After travelling and performing all over the world, Ben Caesar is now back in South Africa working on a new album.