Category Archives: South Africa

Charmaine Kolwane Mrwebi

South Africa No Comments

Charmaine Kolwane Mrwebi is a poet, librarian, puppeteer based in Free State, South Africa. Her poetry effortlessly touches on the shared human experience of living, loving, hurting and hoping.

She was part of the poet disciples who founded performance poetry in 2004 at the Performing Arts of the Free State under the mentorship of the late Thami Moleko. She has published two books, titled Omoseye Bolaji: channeling one’s thoughts onto pen a paper which is a literary analysis of the author Omoseye Bolaji ës works, her second book Poetry Commando which is a collection of poems, is her latest work. She is currently working on her third book which is a children’s book.
She facilitates a poetry club in Legae Intermediate School with 20 young poets from grade 5 to grade 8.

Helen Moffett

South Africa No Comments

Helen Moffett is a freelance writer, editor, academic and poet, whose lectured as far afield as Trinidad and Alaska. Her academic writings include a great deal of gloomy but necessary work on sexual violence in the post-apartheid context. She writes about cricket because it reminds her why she likes men (and because she loves the game with a passion).

She has also published a university textbook on poetry, an anthology of South African landscape writing and several short stories. Poetry is her first and last love, she went from teaching it to students to eventually writing her own. Her debut collection of poems, Strange Fruit, was published by Modjaji Books in 2009.

Hannah Lurie

South Africa No Comments
Hannah Lurie is a sculptor. She has had over 15 solo exhibitions (including jewellery). She has been commissioned for many public works, including the portrait busts of poet Douglas Livingstone and Professor Elizabeth Sneddon at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre. She works on tiny scale for jewellery to a commissioned project, last year, of two figures three metres high entitled Uxolo (Peace).
Lurie has won the Waterman Prize for poetry as well as the Adams Book Shop Prize. She was awarded the Mariette Loots Award for her book I’m too Sexy for My Hair, of which 260 000 copies have been printed so far by sponsors, and which are available at the Cancer Association and Parklands Oncology unit free of charge. The volume deals with the defeat of breast cancer.
She is Honorary Life Vice-President of the KwaZulu-Natal Society of Arts and Past National President of Soroptimist International of Great Britain & Ireland, in Durban, the biggest women’s service organisation in the world.

 

Hugh Hodge

South Africa No Comments

Hugh is a Baby Boomer Brat. He was born in 1946 on Nelson Mandela’s 28th birthday (Hugh’s closest brush with fame) at Tavistock in Devon, England. Rondebosch Boys’ High attempted to educate Hugh without much success. Later, Essex University endured similar disappointments, but got over them.

He has (had) three wives, and three children. Each marriage was happy in its own way and in its own time. The children are more beautiful than he expected. Hugh has had a job as a small, and sometimes negative, contributor to the technological revolution. He also produced bug-free code, but very rarely.

Despite being commonly left-brained, and occasionally no-brained, Hugh writes poetry that is sometimes published. He attends the Off-the-Wall poetry gig Mondays in Obz, and hosts monthly gigs in Kalk Bay and Kommetjie. He edits New Contrast. And, aside from a natural tribal arrogance, he is kind and tolerant, even of dogs.

Hector S Kunene

South Africa No Comments

Born in 1981 in Hammarsdale just outside Durban, Hector S Kunene first journeyed into poetry at the young age of 16 and immediately his love for his art emerged. It was his love for poetry that saw one of his first poems Bloody Corpuscles published in the Sunday Times newspaper. Hector later moved to Bloemfontein where he pursued his childhood dream of publishing a book because “I want to see people reading, I want people to start appreciating poetry again like they did in the days of Don Mattera and the likes of Mzwakhe Mbuli and Keorapetse Gkositsile”.

His first book Through The Tunnel released in 2010 not only received exceptional reviews but was also internationally recognized. He went on to publish a literary study of Omoseye Bolaji that same year which as well was well received by literary pundits, newspapers and numerous other local publications. The successes of both books resulted in him being awarded the Free State Writer of the Year award in 2010 in addition to the Free State Department of Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation purchasing his works for libraries across the province.

Hector, who additionally serves as a Manager at SAA’s Airchef’s division, was also billed to perform at the Howick Writers Festival in Durban and was honored by Darrel David for Midland Literary Festival and Boekbedonner in the Karoo to name but a few. With a third book in the pipeline, the literary protégé is bound to receive further acclaim.

The rising star, who has even learnt other languages in order to resonate with his audiences, sites Dr. Don Mattera, Keorapetse Gkositsile, Napo Mashiane, Jah Rose, Lebo Mashile, Gcina Mhlophe and QwaQwa native Kwazi as his sources of inspiration.

His unique traditional poetry style laced with inspirational spiritual messages has undoubtedly endeared him in the hearts of his followers. “This is what I live to do. I worship God with poetry. I long to see the church appreciating God in Poetry. I yearn to see young children play in the rain singing ‘Re Ne Sa Pula’. I would love to see the libraries filled with our books and us being celebrated all over the world for doing what we love”.

Hector has worked with:
* Afurakhan
* Dr. Cool
* Dr. Don Mattera
* Flaxman Qoopane
* Kgafela
* Icebound
* Jahrose
* Lebo Leisa
* Lesego Rampolokeng
* Myesha Rose Jenkins
* Napo Mashiane
* Natalia Molebatsi
* Omoseye Bolaji
* Raselebeli Khotseng
* Rita Chihawa
* Sheila Khala
* The Archives

Haidee Kruger

South Africa No Comments

Haidee Kruger is associate professor in the School of Languages at the Vaal Triangle Campus of North-West University in South Africa. She holds a PhD in translation studies, and is primarily involved in research in descriptive and theoretical translation studies. Her most recent research publication is Postcolonial polysystems: The production and reception of translated children’s literature in South Africa (John Benjamins, 2012).

Her poetry and short stories have been published in, amongst others, The Common, Big Bridge, New Contrast, New Coin and Green Dragon. Her debut collection of poetry, Lush: poems for four voices, was published in 2007 by Protea Book House. Lush was praised in the judges statement for the 2006/2007 Ingrid Jonker Prize as an “innovative volume of poems” that was “a close contender for the prize”. The reckless sleeper (Modjaji Books, 2012) is her second collection.

Kruger lives in Vereeniging, South Africa, with her husband and three children.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Azila Talit Reisenberger

South Africa No Comments

Azila Talit Reisenberger is an award winning author who has had poetry, short stories and a novel published in Israel, the USA, UK, Germany and South Africa.

Two of her plays: Adam’s Apple and The loving father, were staged at the Grahamstown Festival.

She heads the Hebrew section in the School of Languages and Literatures at the University of Cape Town, and renowned for her passionate lectures and articles on gender issues and feminist theology in the Bible. Since 1990 she has served as the Rabbi of Temple Hillel, a progressive Jewish community in East London. She lives in Cape Town with her husband and three children.

Ari Sitas

South Africa No Comments

Ari Sitas is a poet, dramatist and sociologist. A founder member of the Junction Avenue theatre company in Johannesburg, he was involved in most of its productions until 1982 when he moved to Durban.

Sitas’s involvement in popular and worker theatre since the 1970s has been widely celebrated, his broader writing and involvement as a leading intellectual in anti-Apartheid movements has left a trail of robust engagements within and outside the country. In 1978 the theatre company received the Olive Schreiner Award for his play Randlords and Rotgut, and in 1981 won an award for the video/film Howl at the Moon. His first collection of poetry Tropical Scars (1989) met with much critical acclaim, and he followed this with a collection experimenting with musical form, was included in the anthology, Essential Things (1990). Sitas’s book, Slave Trades (2000), a result of seven years of research and writing has been highly praised. His last collection, The RDP Poems (2004) was his most disturbingly controversial with their precise and bleak analysis of current traumas in South Africa’s transition. Rough music (2014) is his current collection of poetry. Sitas has also penned a libretto for an opera for composer Jurgen Brauninger, Dead Fish and Dreams of Love Again.

Ari Sitas is considered to be one of the country’s leading sociologists and has been elected by the International Sociological Association on the executive of its world council. Locally, he is seen to be a central thinker around the African Renaissance and of social justice and labour movements. He is currently working on a collection of his plays, a take on Around the World in 80 days (of which the India section has been completed) and a series of lyrics titled Insurrections done in conjunction with other poets and composers from South Africa and India.

Antjie Krog

South Africa No Comments

Antjie Krog was born and grew up in the Free State. She became editor of the Afrikaans current-affairs magazine Die Suid-Afrikaan and later worked as a radio journalist covering the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, all the while writing extensively for newspapers and journals. She and her radio colleagues received the Pringle Award for excellence in journalism for their coverage of the Commission hearings, from which came the best known of her three non-fiction books, Country of My Skull.

She has won major awards in almost all the genres and media in which she has worked: poetry, non-fiction and translation. But, mainly, she has lived as a poet. Krog’s first volume of poetry was published when she was seven­teen years old and she has since released thirteen volumes of poetry and received among others the Eugène Marais Prize, the Hertzog Prize, the FNB Prize, the Protea Prize, and, for non-fiction, the Alan Paton Prize and the Olive Schreiner Award. She has also been a recipient of the Stockholm Award from the Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture and the Open Society Prize. She is married to architect John Samuel.

Anele

South Africa No Comments

Anele is a 28 year old poet raised in East London, South Africa but now based in Cape Town. Dead Prez and Tupac Shakur have been his main inspiration throughout his career.

Anele is well known for his witty poetry recited in his mother tongue Xhosa. He has been performing with Lingua Franca since its first Naked Word Poetry Session. In 2013 he performed at the Zabalaza Mini festivals, and he was a headlining act with Lingua Franca during the Naked Slam Poetry 2013. Anele is also part of a Floetry project run by Nanziwe Mzuzu under Bozza.mobi. He won the Cape Town leg of DFL Lover + Another Poetry Challenge in 2013 and was placed fourth at the Nationals.

In 2012 he wrote and performed a poetry production called People from no People at the Black Box Theatre in Delft.

Amagcokama Osonkondlo

South Africa No Comments

Mthokozisi Gumede and Mtungabantu Myeni are passionate young Zulu poets that came together to form the group Amagcokama Osonkondlo. Their love and passion for their art is evident in their dynamic delivery of their work.

Highlights of their career thus far have been performing at the ceremony where Dr. Kenneth Kaunda received a Mahatma Gandhi International Award at the Durban City Hall and also performing at the UMngeni Municipality Councilor.

They’ve also been featured and performed at numerous events.

African Noise Foundation

South Africa No Comments

The African Noise Foundation is a shape-shifting collective of post-everything: poets, musicians and artists’ will include:

  • Zim Ngqawana – virtuoso flute, tenor and soprano sax improviser. Founder of the Zimology Institute for Higher Learning. The South African composer who best exemplifies the Blue Note tradition.
  • Mantombi Matotiyana – one of the last living exponents of the Uhadi. She received acclaim for her contribution to the Amampondo Ensemble and was recently on tour throughout South Africa with The Bow Project.
  • Warrick Sony – Kalahari Surfer – a one man avant-garde crusader, he has been subverting the status quo since the early eighties. Best known for his eclectic electronica, the Surfer embellishes the Foundation’s sound with acoustic instruments only.
  • David Mayekane – a vocal improviser in the tradition of Bobby McFerrin, David’s sweet voice can only be described as ‘angelic’. Previous gigs include harmonies with Ringo.
  • Aryan Kaganof – dada bin ubu poetry and werewolf vocals. Rumours of his death were somewhat exaggerated. His books include Drive-Thru Funeral, Tombstone Dues, Post-Mortemist Poems, as well as the much funnier Ballad Of Sugar Moon And Coffin Deadly. Best known for inventing the “feelbad” movie genre with such audience pleasers as SMS Sugar Man.

Aryan Kaganof

South Africa No Comments

Aryan Kaganof (born 1964 as Ian Kerkhof) is a South African film maker, novelist, poet and fine artist. His books include Drive-Thru Funeral, Tombstone Dues, Post-Mortemist Poems as well as the much funnier Ballad Of Sugar Moon And Coffin Deadly. Best known for inventing the “feelbad” movie genre with such audience pleasers as SMS Sugar Man.

Annelie De Wet

South Africa No Comments

Annelie De Wet works as a freelance journalist, copy writer, scriptwriter, translator, editor & educational video maker.

In 2004 she began training as a Sangoma in Pondoland by way of a calling that changed her life. Poetry became the only way in which she could express this mystical journey and personal healing process. Currently learning isiXhosa and training in Family Constellation Therapy, spiritual and cultural pioneering is her life’s passion.

Anelisa Mbotyana “Dizadala”

South Africa No Comments

Anelisa Mbotyana “Dizadala” considers herself as one who was called to reveal secrets. This 19 year old has lived in Port Elizabeth, South Africa her whole life. Her ancestors bestowed on her the gift to be a praise poet from the tender age of five.

Andrea Nomasebe Dondolo

South Africa No Comments

Andrea is cultural activist, writer, storyteller and award-winning actress, having worked extensively in theatre, radio and television, as well as being traditional Xhosa praise singer (imbongi) and bead craft artist.

She began Human Movement Studies at the University of The Western Cape and later completed a Drama diploma at the New Africa Theatre. Some of the highly successful professional productions she’s featured in are Beading my Soul in collaboration with The Mothertongue Project, Dancing 2 Patterns and Good Heart at the Baxter Theatre and Romeo and Juliet, Ufeziwe okanye Inkohlakalo, Giants and It’s My Life at the Artscape Theatre.

Andrea also facilitates storytelling workshops for adults and children’s programs at various national festivals. She featured in international movies such as The Final Solution and The Piano Player and landed parts in local television series such as Big Okes, Backstage, Madam and Eve, Thetha Msawawa, The Ringmaster, Stokvel, Unchain my Heart, Home Affairs making her a household face and name in South Africa.

Ameera Patel

South Africa No Comments

Ameera Patel is a Jo’burg born actress, writer and poet. She completed her degree in Theatre and Performance at the University of Cape Town in 2005, where she was on the Dean’s Merit list and became part of the Golden Key Society. Her professional theatre performance record includes The Suit (2006), The Bonfire Theatre Company (2006), Victory (2007), Romeo and Juliet (2008), The Insatiables (2008), On Cue Theatre Company (2009), Hot Seat Confessions (2009), Ma Lindi and the Sex Strike (2010).

She is one of the founding members of the Rite 2 Speak poetry collective. Rite 2 Speak started in 2004 and has performed at various corporate events, festivals, bars and events with some of the highlights including National Women’s Day (2008), Urban Voices (2009), The Grahamstown Festival (2009) and Heritage day in Portugal (2008).

Her current projects include Rite 2 Speak gigs, Hamlet with the Framework team and facilitating writing workshops for the Jozi Book Fair.

Afurakan

South Africa No Comments

Afurakan, is the crown prince of Johannesburg’s underground slam poetry.
He is best known for his stage improvisations on hip-hop tunes. His style has caught the attention of many slam poets and and writers across Africa with its rhythm and provocative nature.
This is a poet who can cipher with god – and while celebrating the fact that “Blaq people rock” also writes for the miners who beat rock all their lives, for everything that is “less”.
His activity within Jozi’s poetry movement can be traced back to the “So where to” poetry events, and his work with the poetry collective Soul 2 Mouth, among others.

Afurakan has played a vital role in the growth of the spoken word movement in Johannesburg and indeed South Africa; and he’s a regular at schools and community centres, performing for the purpose of spreading the word.

http://muse.book.co.za/blog/2009/10/15/booked-muse-afurakan/

Afurakan is a founding member of THEMISSINGAP, a three piece rhythm and poetry outfit alongside beat box legend _BlastTheHumanBeat and DJ Duce.
TheMissingGap currently host and promote the popular WORD N SOUND BASSLINE SERIES a monthly open mic and talent showcase platform.

Adrian Different van Wyk

South Africa No Comments

Adrian “Diff” Van Wyk is a poet, master’s student and facilitator from Kuilsriver, Cape Town. Since 2011 he has curated and produced the monthly InZync Poetry Sessions, organising over 40 shows for the poetry platform. He also acts as a workshop facilitator for the INKredible writing workshop, a weekly creativewriting workshop offered to young writers from the Cape Winelands region. In 2015 he was nominated as one of 200 young South Africans to watch by the Mail & Guardian newspaper in the Arts and Culture category. In May 2015, Diff, travelled with InZync to London in collaboration with the Roundhouse Theatre performing at the Last Word Spoken Word Festival and collaborating on the #TalkingDoorsteps video poetry project. Diff has featured at Mcgregor Poetry Festival, Woordfees, Word N Sound International Youth Poetry Festival, Oppikoppie Music Festival, Open Book Festival and many other expression platforms. You can catch “Diff” at the monthly InZync Session or standing to the left of you waiting to drop a verse in a cypher.

Icebound

South Africa No Comments

“Born to flames
Conceived in between rows
reared to spark riots
and fled the norm”

These are the lines from a 30-year-old Free State’s spoken-word activist and poet, Serame Makhele popularly known as Icebound. He uses these words extracted from a piece called Poet’s protest to introduce himself, in a nutshell, to audiences. Icebound draws his inspiration from countless Pan-African writers that he studied and read as a youngster and continues to explore.

His unique style of performance which he termed Rhyme and Reason, Rhythm and Content, illustrates a perfect incorporation of rap and ragga into classical African poetry and literature. Icebound prefers mainly to write and perform about hardcore socio-politico and economic issues. This can be proven by words quoted from his controversial piece titled Burn dem up and destroy dem:

Capitalism and fascism
Modern-day Nazism and imperialism
We use spoken-word as a mechanism
To burn them up and destroy them

 

Isabella Motadinyane

South Africa No Comments

Isabella Motadinyane was born in 1963 in Mofolo Central, Soweto. She went as far as Grade Five in her formal schooling. She studied piano at the so-called “Five Roses Bowl” and attended dance and acting classes in Jozi. As a result of creative writing workshops she wrote the poem One leg in which contains the phrase die is mos botsotsos. This phrase afterwards gave rise to the name of the Botsotso Jesters, the poetry performance group of which she was a founding member in 1994, and whose publishing arm, Botsotso Publishing brought out the two collections, We Jive Like This (1996) and Dirty Washing (1999), from whom the poems in this collected works are taken.

She was brought up by her grandmother and adopted the surname Motadinyane even though, when she traced her roots and the whereabouts of her absent father, she discovered that he was from the Mabalane family of Meadowlands and Ndofaya. At the time of her death on 19 February 2003 – her fortieth birthday – she was living with her mother in Orange Farm.

As a stage presence she was unique – confident, varied, vivacious. Her rich voice both sang and spoke, infusing her poems with great musicality; as significant, they worked equally convincingly on the page. Her voice is captured on the Botsotso Jesters cd, Purple Light Mirror in the Mud (2001). Indeed, Isabella Motadinyane used Isicamtho and Sotho to create a powerful legacy of performance, poetry and song. A collection of her poems (as previously published with the Botsotso Jesters) entitled Bella was published in 2007.

Ingrid Andersen

South Africa No Comments

Ingrid Andersen was born in Johannesburg, read for a degree in English literature and film and theatre criticism at Wits, has a Masters degree and is presently completing her PhD. Her work has been published in poetry journals for nearly two decades. Excision, her first volume of poetry, was published in 2004 and her second, Piece Work, was published by Modjaji Books in September 2010.

Her influences include the French Romantic poets, Imagism, Ted Hughes and the writings of Basho. She is the founding editor of Incwadi, a South African journal that explores the interaction between poetry and image.

Andersen’s work has been published in local literary journals including Imprint, Slugnews, Carapace, Green Dragon, Botsotso, Incwadi and New Coin, online in LitNet, Peony Moon and Ink, Sweat and Tears as well as internationally. Her work has been anthologized in collections as well as included in English setworks. She presented her work at WordFest at the National Arts Festival in 2004 and 2005, as well as at the Hilton Arts Festival in 2009. She contributed the libretto for a musical which was staged twice in the early ’90s. Her creative writing workshops focus on allowing creativity to overcome disabling self-critique.

Ingrid worked as a theatre publicist in the 1980s, the days of political protest theatre, at the Market Theatre and PACT, amongst others, working with some fascinating people.

As South Africa began to rebuild after the first democratic elections, she became active in community activism and development, at The Salvation Army Territorial Headquarters, as CEO of the Rosebank Homeless Association and then as Community Engagement Manager at Rhodes University. She co-ordinated the Pietermaritzburg Anti-Xenophobia Coalition during 2008-2009. She worked thereafter for the Centre for Adult Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and presently is General Manager of the Midlands Meander. Ingrid celebrates her tenth anniversary of ordination as an Anglican priest this year. She works in healing and reconciliation ministry. She was nominated for Rhodes University Amnesty International ‘Woman of the Year’ in 2007 and is a member of the Golden Key Society.

Ingrid has lived most of her life in Johannesburg, worked in Grahamstown for five years and relocated to the KwaZulu–Natal Midlands in 2007. She lives with a two cherished cats, Dickens and Catriona.

Finuala Dowling

South Africa No Comments

Finuala Dowling was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1962. Her first volume of poetry, I Flying, won the Ingrid Jonker Prize and her second collection, Doo-Wop Girls of the Universe, was joint winner of the SANLAM award. Her third volume of poetry, Notes from the dementia ward won the Olive Schreiner Prize. She has appeared as a guest poet at the Aldeburgh festival and at Snape Maltings in the UK, and at all of South Africa’s major literary festivals. In May-June of 2012 she appeared with other South African poets at the Biennale Internationale des Poètes en Val-de-Marne in Paris.

Finuala is the author of three novels, the most recent of which — Homemaking for the Down-at-Heart — won the 2012 MNet prize for fiction.

Finuala has a Masters and doctorate in English literature. She writes textbooks, runs poetry workshops and occasionally gives lectures.

Paulination

South Africa No Comments

PAULINATION is an outspoken voice that captures people in passing and makes them listen,he speaks of human experience in different categories revolving around issues faced by society like drugs, sexual abuse and racial tension. He incorporates dramatical aspects mixed with energetic movements and wonderful click sounds into his stories, what makes him different is the lyrical mixture that cuts through the barrier between Zulu and English.

This outspoken storyteller is originally from a group of poets called Nowadays Poets.

Patricia Schonstein

South Africa No Comments

Patricia is an internationallly published, award winning novelist and poet whose works have been translated into five languages.

In 1984, in response to apartheid and the political violence in the Eastern Cape, she opened a non-racial pre-school. She wrote and self-published stories, poems and songs that had relevance to her pupils’ lives, and which were based on the same principles of peace she used in her classes.

After completing a Master’s Degree in creative writing at the University of Cape Town, she focused on full-time authorship. Although her novels are decorative, magical, opulent and richly furnished, they carry at core a deep, philosophical note as she exposes the emotional carnage caused by war and genocide.

Her novels reflect variously on the Holocaust, South Africa’s wars in Angola and Mozambique, Zimbabwe’s Chimurenga war and current dictatorship, the bombing of Dresden and apartheid.They also reflect on the way we ‘war’ against the earth and other species.Yet, despite these dark matters, her fictions are full of hope and joy and love.

Her poetry is another matter. Here she is blunt and to the point. She captures, in language that is at times paradoxically lyrical and beautiful, the full scale and horror of war, genocide, fratricide and our destruction of the natural world. Patricia’s is a voice for peace.

Pitika Ntuli

South Africa No Comments

Pitika Ntuli is an internationally renowned poet, fine artist and academic. He is widely sought-after as a public speaker and commentator on arts and culture, indigenous knowledge systems and African scholarship. As an acclaimed poet, his poetry has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies.

Ntuli holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute in New York, USA. He spent his exile years in the U.K. where he helped establish one of Europe’s leading poetry circuits, Apples & Snakes in London. While in London, Ntuli also lectured in Fine Art and English Literature and he worked closely with Amnesty International and Index-on-Censorship.

Ntuli returned to South Africa at the end of 1994 and lectured at the former University of the Witwatersrand before joining the staff of the former University of Durban-Westville in 1995 as Head of the Fine Art Department.

Pitika Ntuli has held several portfolios on boards including the BAT Centre Trust, Universal Creative Arts and Artists for Human Rights. Ntuli was also co-director of the Awesome Africa Music Festival. He is currently Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Indigenous Knowledge Systems.

Pitika Ntuli has performed his poetry with leading musicians like the late Dudu Pukwana, Mervin Africa, Julian Bahula, Lucky Ranku and Eugene Skeef and has toured Europe several times with his poetry. His poetry has received critical acclaim around the world. In 2004, Ntuli performed at the inauguration of former South African President Thabo Mbeki.

Also a sculptor, Ntuli recently held a solo exhibition Scent of Invisible Footprints in Moments of Complexity at Museum Africa in Johannesburg. His book Scent of Invisible Footprints: The Sculpture of Pitika Ntuli is also an exploration of his art form.

Pieter Odendaal

South Africa No Comments

Pieter Odendaal started out as a boerseun in Bloemfontein and has a BA and half of an abandoned BSc-degree. He is the co-founder and project manager of SLiP, the Stellenbosch Literary Project, which creates and nourishes analogue and digital platforms of creative engagements with words. The project’s website focuses on contemporary South African books, “poetries”, cultures and initiatives around multilingualism and translation. He also co-coordinates the popular InZync Poetry Sessions and high school poetry workshops with his partner in rhyme, Adrian Different.

He hopes to publish his debut poetry collection sometime soon. A handful of his Afrikaans poems appeared in Nuwe Stemme 5 (2013). In 2015, he’ll be studying things about sustainable development and how to save the world.

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers

South Africa No Comments

Multi-award winning poet, playwright and performance artist, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers is a graduate of the Lecoq International School of Theatre in Paris. Her poetry ranges from the private to the political, exploring matters serious, satirical and sensual. She has a prolific portfolio of national and international stage and television productions. Taller than Buildings is first collection of poetry.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Pearl Sanelisiwe Ndlovu

South Africa No Comments

Pearl Sanelisiwe Ndlovu sought solace in words and poetry at the age of 15 when her beloved grandmother passed away.

Commonly known as Le Soulful Poet Gatsheni, Pearl is a young poet from Kwazulu Natal, South Africa. Her work delves into varied topics but she mainly uses her words as way to make sense of life’s challenges. She improves her writing and reciting skills by performing as much as she can in her hometown.

Pearl has an insatiable passion for art, she believes poetry is her calling and not a mere hobby. “We are the prophets of the past, present and future” she says.

Pamella Dlungwana

South Africa No Comments

Pam Dlungwana is a transplant Capetonian by way of Durban, South Africa. She spends much of her time behind pink rimmed glasses, tea colored pages and when spoken to speaks of herself in the third person, always.

A television writer/researcher and producer she expresses her Swiss cheese opinion best in poetry and has collaborated with visual artists using the media to educate, liberate and incite.

Pam has published in online journals (Poetry Potion, Itch and her wordpress blog) and has used Facebook as her personal bulletin board, screaming her politic, annoyances and passion through verse in the notes section.

Roché Kester

South Africa No Comments

Roché Kester hails from Cape Town and considers herself a writer, performer and director. She implemented these passions in the acclaimed feminist production Reclaiming the P…word, where she has graced the stages of the Baxter theatre and the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.
As a poet, Roche placed second in the Africa day poetry competition in 2009. More recently Roché placed in the top six in the Lover +Another national poetry competition . Roché believes in the transformative power of words and sees her expression as a means to ignite love and growth and unity.