Tag Archives: Delight

Blackpearl

Zimbabwe No Comments

Black pearl was born and raised in Zimbabwe. The 25 year old poet emerged on the performance scene in June 2010. Her poetry is impeccable and captivating to all poetry lovers. Her work depicts life as she experiences it, pointing out beauty, and humor. Blackpearl has taken part in events that include Harare International Festival of the Arts, 16 Days of Activism against Gender based violence, Acoustic Nights (hosted by Zimbabwe German Society and Wildfire Events), Intwasa Festival, Sistaz Open Mic, Bocapa amongst others.

Billene “Bilu” Seyoum

Ethiopia No Comments

Billene “Bilu” Seyoum – avid word lover and travel enthusiast has been splashing words to paper since the age of twelve capturing her experiences of faces, places and spaces. Her poetry aims to take listeners and readers on a journey of re-imagining different imaginings of everyday existence. Having lived in five countries and traveled wide, Bilu’s poetry embraces her global identity.

Bulelwa Basse

South Africa No Comments

Bulelwa Basse is the Founder of Lyrical Base Project, an arts and culture organisation which seeks to elevate the profiles of writers from marginalised communities through community-publishing projects and performance poetry (merged with music, dance, visual arts) at cultural and corporate events.

She has collaborated nationally with various arts education institutions and literary establishments, such as Kgare Ya Africa, Centre for the Book, Iziko Museum’s Education Department, Cape Town Language Committee, Artscape Theatre, Badilisha Poetry and the City of Cape Town, in the capacity of Language Facilitator, Published/Performance Poet, Guest Speaker and Events Co-ordinator.

Her writing has been published by the Poetry Institute of Africa, University of KwaZulu Natal Press, Department of Arts and Culture, The British Council and Oprah Magazine.

Basse is passionate about aligning herself with women empowerment projects such as Bona Magazine’s Women Empowerment Club, True Love Magazine’s Winning Style and Move Magazine’s empowerment initiatives, for which she’s both hosted and performed her poetry as a motivational tool.

Bulelwa is former Editor of Muse, an online poetry publishing and profiling magazine, and has earned herself a performance platform on, Poetry Delight, where she’s affectionately known on stage as, Miss “Sassy” Basse, following her satirical poem entitled: My Lyrical Sass, which confronts the societal nature of portraying women as sex-objects.

Her creative and business path has seen her represent her country as an arts and cultural-exchange ambassador in India (Coimbatore and Kerala) and tour the UK (England). But South African stages have always been her favorite arena of her work at play.

Bongiwe Dlamini

Mozambique No Comments

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.

Bassey Ikpi

United States No Comments

Bassey Ikpi is a Nigerian born poet/writer who was a featured cast member of the National Touring Company of the Tony Award winning Broadway show, Russell Simmon’s Def Poetry Jam. Not a stranger to the stage, her poetry has also opened shows by Grammy Award winning artists. Recently, Bassey appeared on the NAACP Image Awards as part of a tribute to Venus and Serena Williams and was a featured performer for Johannesburg, South Africa’s annual arts festival, Joburg Arts Alive. Bassey has been seen gracing the pages of magazines such as Nylon, Marie Claire, Glamour and Bust.

With social commentary being a focus of her work, Bassey recorded an original poem for the Kaiser Foundation’s, HIV/AIDS campaign, Knowing Is Beautiful. Bassey’s personal and heartfelt work has made her a much sought after performer. She is currently working on various screenplays as well as freelance writing for social media outlets. Her first completed collection of poetry and prose entitled, Blame My Teflon Heart: Poetry, Prose and Post-Its For Boys Who Didn’t Write Back will be released soon. In addition to her writing, this summer Bassey is also embarking on a 5 city tour, appropriately called “Basseyworld Live”, where each show will infuse poetry and interactive panel discussions on everything from politics to pop culture. Not only will she headline each show, but will also moderate the panel discussions, which will include special invited guests from various industries such as art, film and journalism.

Boonaa Mohammed

Canada No Comments

Dubbed the “voice of a generation,” Boonaa Mohammed is a critically acclaimed award winning writer and performer with accolades including a playwright residency at Theatre Passe Muraille, a short story published in a Penguin Canada anthology called Piece by Piece and various slam poetry titles including winner of the 2007 CBC Poetry Face-Off “Best New Artist” award. As an Artist he has toured and traveled across the world and frequently conducts writing workshops and seminars, sharing his experience and expertise in social justice based story telling with mainly youth from all walks of life.

Breyten Breytenbach

South Africa No Comments

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.

Muki Garang

Kenya No Comments

Muki is committed to the Kenyan art scene because he believes he can utilise the power of entertainment to provide education on different key issues affecting the Kenyan population.

Over the past few years he has conducted interviews at The Hampshire College addressing various topics on East African Hip Hop, including the historical context, the role of popular culture as a mode of expression and tool for public education and the possibilities of using the avenue to address various community needs.

More importantly his work utilises music as a tool for community empowerment, this work is captured in Prof. Mwenda Ntaragwis book titled East African Hiphop: Youth, culture and globolization.

In his tenure as an activist, he has engaged in a number of socially conscious projects, collaborating with institutions such as the Sarakasi Trust, French Cultural Centre, Goethe Institute and the British council.

More than being a poet and Hiphop artist, Muki is the co-founder of Words and Pictures (WAPI) – an acclaimed youth arts project in Nairobi which serves as a monthly platform for upcoming artists (for which he was nominated for the British Council’s International Youth Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2006).

He convened a project called ‘Hip Hop Parliament’ in the midst of the post-election violence 2007/2008 in Kenya, as a means to engage Nairobi’s youth in positive dialogue across ethnic lines. In addition he is the founder of Maisha Yetu – a non-profit arts organization for youth, and he also worked at Ghetto Radio 89.5fm as an editor for their online journal www.ghettoradio.nl.

 

Mbali Kgosidintsi

South Africa No Comments

Mbali Kgosidintsi graduated from the University of Cape Town in 2004 with a B.A in Theatre and Performance and was on the Deans Merit List for Drama. Her professional debut was on the Maynardville stage where she played the young lead of Hero in
Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Fred Abrehemse.

She then went on to do Tall Horse with The Handspring Puppet Company, which opened at The Baxter Theatre in Cape Town 2005, before touring to the Theatre de Welt Festival in Stuttgart Germany, followed by an eight state American tour at various prestigious venues, from the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York to The Kennedy Centre in Washington DC.

In the same year, she joined The Mother Tongue Project who collaborated with members of the Darling community to workshop and produce Breathing Space for the Darling Festival. On her return from Darling she staged her first production, By word of Mouth- A night of Lace and Petals which combines dance, music, poetry and theatrical aspects to tell a story featuring Rite 2 Speak. She is one of the members of Rite 2 Speak, a female poetry collective that addresses identity in contemporary South Africa. They have performed at prestigious events ranging from National Women’s Day 2008 to Heritage Day in Portugal and Urban Voices Festival 2009.

Mbali played the lead of Electra in Yael Farber’s Molora which opened in Yokohama, Japan 2006. She was recruited as one of four writers / adapters to develop two productions for the London/South Africa based company Portobello productions. The writing team, directed by Mark Donford-May, adapted A Magic Flute – Impempe Yomlingo and it went on to win the 2008 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical Revival.

Mbali was awarded a writing residency on the island of Sylt, Germany to develop her autobiographical novel, which formed the basis for her one-woman show, which was then produced by The Mother Tongue Project entitled Tseleng The Baggage of Bags written and performed by Mbali and directed by Sara Matchett. It won the ovation award at The National Grahamstown festival 2010. Mbali was invited to participate in Poetry workshops hosted by Badilisha Poetry X-change featuring internationally acclaimed poets and selected to participate in a two-week workshop with internationally acclaimed poet, Stacey Ann Chin where they investigated themes of the self and the body.

She recently played the character of a modern day Medea in award winning playwright and human rights activist, Ariel Dorfman’s Purgatorio, at a play reading hosted by the Baxter Theatre.

Mbali continues to write and perform poetry and is working on her first novel.

Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

Kenya No Comments

Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye is one of the most prolific women writers, not only in Kenya, but also in Africa. She has distinguished herself as a writer of novels, poetry, and children’s stories. She was born in Southampton, England, in 1928 and came to Kenya as a missionary bookseller in 1954. She married D.G.W. Macgoye in 1960 and subsequently integrated into her husband’s extended family and the Luo community. This feature is well manifested in her literary works which have been acknowledged all over the world. Coming to Birth won the Sinclair Prize for fiction in 1986, while Homing In won second place in the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature in 1985.

Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie

United States No Comments

Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie is a writer, educator, and performer. She has been a featured speaker at universities, festivals and events throughout Europe and North America. She is the Poetry Editor of the literary magazine African Voices.

Her work  deals with silence, sexism and racism and it has been published in Crab Orchard Review, BOMB, Paris/Atlantic, Go, Tell Michelle (SUNY), Listen Up! (One World Ballantine) and Revenge and Forgiveness (Henry Holt). Tallie’s work has been the subject of a short film “I Leave My Colors Everywhere.” Her first collection of poetry, Karma’s Footsteps, was released by Flipped Eye Publishing in September of 2011. She is the recipient of a 2010 Queens Council on the Arts grant for her research on herbalists of the African Diaspora. She has taught literature and composition  at York College and Medgar Evers College in New York City.

Mama C

Tanzania No Comments

Charlotte Hill O’Neal aka Mama C is an internationally known visual artist, musician and poet with more than two decades of experience. She was born in Kansas City, KS in 1951 and has lived in Africa with her husband Pete O’Neal since 1970. She is the mother of two children, Malcolm and AnnWood “Stormy”. She is co-director of the United African Alliance Community Center UAACC located outside of Arusha, Tanzania. www.uaacc.habari.co.tz
Mama C was greatly influenced in her early years by the jazz, blues and gospel that Kansas City is famous for and integrates elements of that experience in both her music and the rhythm of her poetry along with the African beats and hip hop vibe of her spirit. She explores the reality of her life as a Diaspora born African who has lived most of her years in Tanzania in many of her poems, one of the most famous being I Almost Lost Myself.

“As a member of the Black Panther Party I was taught the importance of building international solidarity among all people while honoring my Ancestral roots. That philosophy has never changed and many of my poems and songs reflect this burning desire and mission to spread peace, love and unity through my art”, Mama C reflects. “The spontaneous release of love that comes from poetry and music and art, in general… that thing that binds us all together and builds solidarity and understanding among all people no matter where they are from or what language they speak, is like magic!”

Her song writing and performing talents have been showcased on stage, television and radio in many cities in Africa and in America during the annual UAACC Heal the Community Tour. She launched her book of poetry, Warrior Woman of Peace in 2008 and plans to launch her second book of poetry titled Life Slices – a Taste of My Heaven, in 2013. Mama C debuted several of her newest poems during the Poetry Africa Tour 2010 to Cape Town – South Africa, Harare – Zimbabwe and Blantyre – Malawi and the 14th Annual Poetry Africa Festival in Durban, all sponsored by the Creative Arts Center at University of KwaZulu Natal.

Mama C is co-director along with George Kyomushula, of the newly established Arusha Poetry Club in Arusha, Tanzania which serves as a platform for East African poets and artists around the planet.
She recently completed her 4th music/spoken word album produced at Peace Power Productions studio at UAACC and she has directed and appeared in several music videos featuring East African artists, YouTube channel: mamacharlotteuaacc

Mama C and Pete O’Neal are the subjects of two award winning documentaries about their lives and activism including American Exile narrated by Hollywood actress Alfre Woodard and the PBS documentary, A Panther in Africa by Aaron Matthews and she is one of the featured artists along with M1 of Deadprez in a newly released documentary on art and activism by Michael Wanguhu titled Ni Wakati, http://www.pbs.org/itvs/globalvoices/pantherinafrica.html, http://www.niwakatithefilm.com/

Mama C has learned to play the Obokano, an ancient African eight string lyre that originates in the Gusii community in western Kenya. Even though the instrument was considered taboo for women to play, one of the recognized masters of obokano, Dennis “Grandmaster Masese” Mosiere, felt that things should change and taught Mama C. She is the first woman to play professionally and finds that, “mixing obokano with poetry and song brings me so much pleasure and adds to the scope of my creativity!”

She is presently working with several artists to establish an indigenous music school and archive/museum at UAACC. They have already begun building instruments like the kiteníge from the Maasai community; umakhweyane from the Zulu community; obokano from the Gusii community; the marimba and the kalimba thumb piano that is played in nearly every country in sub Saharan Africa,Youtube channel: Wakunga zamani

Mama C: Urban Warrior in the African Bush is a new documentary about Mama C’s life as an artist activist by film maker, Dr. Joanne Hershfield who is a professor of Womens Studies and Department Head, at North Carolina State University Chapel Hill.
A trailer and more information about the film can be found at www.mamacurbanwarriorfilm.com

Mufasa

Kenya No Comments

Mufasa is a spoken word artist, actor and singer born and raised in Kenya. He popped into the spoken word scene after winning a spoken word slam competition. Since then Mufasa has been performing in all major poetry events in Kenya. Raised by a single mother, Mufasa is a passionate performer on stage and hides no emotions when he speaks about his life and disturbing issues in the society.

Natalia Molebatsi

South Africa No Comments

Natalia Molebatsi is a writer, performance poet, workshop facilitator and programme director who has presented shows such as An Evening with Alice Walker, Urban Voices International Spoken Word Festival, and an evening with the father of Ehio-jazz, Mulatu Astatke.

The Tembisa-born and raised Natalia has performed in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Holland, Italy, Nigeria, Senegal, Arzerbaijan and England. She is founding member of the South African/Italian band Soul Making.

Nandi Nothando Mabel Khumalo

South Africa No Comments

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.

Naledi Raba

South Africa No Comments

Naledi Raba is a 21 year old poet from Nyanga, a township in Cape Town, South Africa.

She first performed in New York in 2008 and has since been performing in various places in Cape Town. Naledi won the Slam Poetry Competition at University of Cape Town in 2012 and in 2013 she won the national DFL Lover + Another Poetry Challenge in 2013.

Ngwatilo Mawiyoo

Kenya No Comments

Drawing from her musical background and her work as an actress, Ngwatilo Mawiyoo is acclaimed as “a priest of the art of performed poetry.” She has performed in venues in East Africa, Europe and North America, recently performing at the 2009 13th Stockholm Poetry Festival.

An undisputed young master of the written word, Ngwatilo’s first collection of poems Blue Mothertongue (2010) is “crafted with beautiful pace and intelligence,” “a worthy testament of her times.”

Her poems may also be found in literary journals around the world including Kwani? published by The Kwani Trust and The Literary Review published by Farleigh & Dickinson University.”

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Keneilwe Idle Mohutsiwa

Botswana No Comments

Keneilwe is a web and mobile application developer, poet and rapper from the town of Kanye in Southern Botswana. He’s one of Botswana’s sprouting talents. This twenty four year old has performed at various open-mics and school talent shows in Gaborone and Kanye.

In November 2010, Keneliwe performed in a poetry event dubbed Unfolding the Scrolls: Chronicles of the Poets – Part 1 organized and hosted by Poetavango Spoken Word Poetry in Maun, Botswana.

Kelwyn Sole

South Africa No Comments

Kelwyn Sole grew up in Johannesburg and has degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand and the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London. He has published widely in local and international books and journals, mainly on issues pertaining to South African and postcolonial literature and culture, as well as being involved in published debates and polemics. He has also published six individual collections of poetry. He has won the Olive Schreiner Prize, the Sydney Clouts Prize and the Thomas Pringle Award for poetry, and was a runner-up for the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. He has won the AA Mutual Life/Vita Award and the Thomas Pringle Award for his critical work.

Books:

The Blood of Our Silence (Johannesburg, Ravan, 1988)
Projections in the Past Tense (Johannesburg, Ravan, 1992)
Love That is Night  (Durban, Gecko Books, 1998)
Mirror and Water Gazing  (Pietermaritzburg, Gecko/University of Natal Press, 2001)
Land dreaming: prose poems (Pietermaritzburg, University of Kwazulu-Natal Press, 2006
Absent Tongues (Cape Town, Hands-On Books, 2012)

Kaie Kellough

Canada No Comments

Kaie Kellough is a Montréal writer, performer, and general word-sound systemizer. He is the author of Lettricity (Cumulus Press 2004), and Maple Leaf Rag (Arbeiter Ring Publishing 2010), which was nominated for the Manuela Dias award for book design. Kaie is the voice of one sound recording, Vox:Versus, a suite of conversations between voice and instrument.

Kaie’s print and sound work are underwritten by rhythm and by a desire to dis-and re-assemble language and meaning. Kaie’s work emerges where voice, language, music, and text intersect. He blends word-games with sound poetry, dub, and jazzoetry. He has performed and published internationally, and has led sound poetry workshops at the Banff Center for the Arts. Kaie is presently working on short fiction and on poems that say goodbye.

Kneo Mokgopa

South Africa No Comments

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’.

Kerry Hammerton

South Africa No Comments

Kerry Hammerton has published poetry in various South African and UK literary journals. Some of her poems were included in the anthology Difficult to Explain (Finuala Dowling ed.) and Africa, My Africa (Patricia Schonstein ed.). These are the lies I told you, her debut poetry collection, was published by Modjaji Books in 2010.

Kennet B

Kenya No Comments

Odongo Kennedy Leakey, known in the entertainment industry as Kennet B, started writing spoken word poetry 14 years ago. He began performing actively in early 2009 after winning the Slam Africa Poetry Championship founded by Imani Womera of Imani Inc. Prior to this, he had recorded his first spoken word poetry single Reality Absurdity, the video for which is forthcoming. Driven by the global concern about HIV and AIDS, his lyrics are majorly pegged on the social issues that are responsible for the spread of the virus.

He has four albums on the table; Coming of Age, a seven track pure spoken word poetry album , Success a 15 track musical-poetry album, Cheka na Kennet, and Refugee.

Currently Kennet is working on a short stories compilation The Sheng Anthology vol 1. This is a collection of conflict-laden social narratives aimed at impacting the repeated emphatic distress felt when a favorite character is seen in imminent danger. This often enhances the enjoyment of the stories and one sees the resolution of the threat (HIV&AIDS) as the narratives unfold.

Keith Gottschalk

South Africa No Comments

Keith Gottschalk published his collection of prison & other protest poems, Emergency Poems, in 1992. He served on the executive of the Congress of South Africa Writers, COSAW, in the 1980s, and today hosts the Lansdowne Local Writers’ Group. He has performed and published over 160 poems, the latter in many magazines.

A Fulbright scholar, Keith lectures in Political Studies at the University of the Western Cape.

Kate Ellis-Cole

South Africa No Comments

Kate Ellis-Cole is an enigma. Always perfectly styled, she carries herself with a secret confidence that’s almost regal. Grace and eloquence spill from her lips in conversation and it’s difficult not to form certain preconceived expectations when this soft-spoken lady steps on stage: she’s white, she’s a woman and she clearly sounds privileged. And then she opens her mouth. Kate’s poetry and subject matter is far from what the initial impression would lead one to expect. From political satire to the strong cross-cultural ties she experiences with land and country, her poetry reflects magnitudes of conscientious and sensitive living and there’s something about her and the unapologetic sincerity with which she speaks and performs that’s endearing and mesmerising.

Kai Lossgott

South Africa No Comments

German-born, Kai Lossgott lives and works in Cape Town. In search of poetry, he travelled from paper to canvas, from theatre to film, and into digital media. In his performances, poems, experimental films and plant leaf engravings, he investigates biophysical language patterns and the vulnerable instincts which drive them sensitivity, silence, and acts of sensing. In a human-centred world, his aim is most often to work from a life-centred perspective.

Liam Kruger

South Africa No Comments

Liam Kruger is a 22-year-old writer and student living in Cape Town South Africa.

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Liesl Jobson

South Africa No Comments

Liesl Jobson is a Cape Town writer, musician and photographer. Her poetry and prose has appeared in various journals and anthologies in South Africa and internationally. She edits Poetry International, South Africa and teaches poetry online at the SA Writers College. She works for BOOK SA, as a literary journalist, where she also blogs periodically. She is the author of 100 Papers, a collection of prose poems and flash fiction, and View from an Escalator, a book of poems, both published by Botsotso.

Onokemi Onojobi

Nigeria No Comments

Onokemi Onojobi (a.k.a Qono) is an artistic, avant-garde persona, a perspicacious lover of words, writing and all things aesthetic. A performance poet and a musician. Onokemi is also an advocate against Child Sexual Abuse amongst other things.

Odia Ofeimun

Nigeria No Comments

Odia Ofeimun, poet, polemicist and polymath was born in Iruekpen-Ekuma, Edo State, Nigeria, on March 16th 1950. The author of ten significant volumes of poetry, Mr. Ofeimun has also published two books of political essays, four books on cultural politics as well as editing two anthologies of Nigerian poetry.

Widely anthologized and translated into many world languages, Mr. Ofeimun has read and performed his poetry in several countries of the world including Ghana, South Africa, Ethiopia, India, South Korea, Columbia, Germany, Israel, Great Britain, China, the United States of America, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, Sweden, Italy and Cuba.

At home in Nigeria, Mr. Ofeimun’s practice of journalism, spanning the years of military tyranny, has inspired a whole generation of journalists in print and electronic media. The principled stand of Mr. Ofeimun came at the price of random invasion of his residence, seizure of his manuscripts, computer discs and Nigerian Passport to deny him freedom of movement. Undeterred, and while practicing probably the most dangerous vocation of all at the time, Mr. Ofeimun served the Association of Nigerian Authors as General Secretary and President respectively. He has been designated advisor to PEN Nigeria Centre and is a founding member of the Pan African Writers Association.

Mr. Ofeimun is the recipient of many awards the latest of which is the prestigious Fonlon-Nichols Award for literary excellence and propagation of Human Rights which was conferred on him by the African Literature Association in 2010. In a literary career spanning four decades, Mr. Ofeimun has distinguished himself with poetry and essays which challenge both the imagination and the intellect, crossing cultural borders and establishing new benchmarks in the articulation of the African narrative. His essays are valued both for knowledge and analysis, for what to know and for how to think about what is known.

Though only 62, Mr. Ofeimun is fondly called ‘Baba’ by the post-civil war generation of Nigerian writers many of whom have found touchstones in his works or have been individually mentored in writing by Mr. Ofeimun. For his copious literary output while engaged with anti-military rule struggle in Nigeria, Mr. Ofeimun has been called an exemplar of conscionable and consistent writing and the writerly life.

Obanya

Nigeria No Comments

A Marketing Communications specialist, Obanya has worked and managed advertising strategy for several global brands in Africa. He is a novelist and a poet with published and unpublished works. His published works are, Him Bone Poetree and Sickles Raised from Dust.

He is in the process of publishing a new novel titled, Ijambody and a new book of poems titled, Ambient Noon and other poems.

He currently lives in Lagos, Nigeria or Accra, Ghana.