Ochieng Adholla, also known as Ochi, is a conscious Kenyan poet and philosopher. His first collection of poems, Panther’s Diary, was published in 2011 by Salonica Press, an Imprint of Seaburn Publishing Group based in New York. His second collection of poems, compiled in 2014 , is a free e-book available on his website.
Chris Mann, a South African of English, Dutch and Irish descent, was born in Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. He started his working life in rural development and poverty alleviation projects, such as low-cost water-supply and sanitation, small-scale agriculture and labour-intensive public works including secondary road and pipeline construction. This multi-faceted, multi-talented writer has also taught English in a rural school, lectured in English at Rhodes University and worked in teacher development and job creation. He has volunteered for various trusts, has been a parish councillor and was a founder and song-writer of Zabalaza, a cross-culture band performing in English and Zulu.
His formal education includes a BA from Wits majoring in English and Philosophy, an MA from the School of Oriental and African Languages (London) in African Oral Literature and an MA from Oxford in English Language and Literature. Now based at the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, he is the founder and convenor of Wordfest, a national multilingual festival of South African languages and literatures with a developmental emphasis. Chris Mann’s poems have appeared in a wide range of journals, textbooks and anthologies in South Africa and abroad. He performs his work at various festivals, schools, churches, universities and conferences around the country as part of a life-long passion to promote poetry in the public domain. Able to converse in Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa, Mann writes poetry influenced by the richness of the different languages he speaks and which reflects the diverse work experiences and social encounters he has had. Keenly narrative, his poems convey to the reader the textural details of the South African landscape and the intimacy of its people. As he examines his own spirituality, which appears rooted in the history, place and potential that is contemporary South Africa, his practical musicianship emerges clearly in the lilting lyricism and rhythm of his poetry.
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.
Thandi Sliepen is a self taught artist living in the Eastern Free State. Born in 1971 in Mowbray, Cape Town she left South Africa in 1976 and immigrated with her family to New Zealand where she completed her formal education.
In 1990 she farewelled the antipodes and returned to Africa, first to Tanzania for 8 months and then back to her roots in South Africa. In 1992 Thandi met artist Martin Wessels and the stage was set for a life of Art. She moved into a cave on Martin’s property and started painting, sculpting and continued to write poetry prolifically.
Since then Thandi has lived and exhibited in various places around South Africa, New Zealand and the Netherlands. Thandi currently lives on a farm outside Ladybrand with her partner, photographer Glen Green and their two children.
Thandi’s website is www.glengreen.co.za/thandi
Andile Nayika was born and raised in Grahamstown, South Africa. He was first introduced to storytelling and poetry by his late grandmother. He has published his works in various poetry publications like Oppikoppi’s Ons Klyntj. He has also written for media houses such as the Mail & Guardian in Johannesburg. He is a founding member of the Writers Movement, which collaborates with the Rhodes University English Department to produce the Cycle of Knowledge.
Fadzai Nova Dube is a writer and philosopher. She was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and is of Shona origin. She relocated to East London, South Africa at the age of 5. In 2007, Fadzai moved to Cape Town to complete a B.A in film and Media at the University of Cape Town.
She currently lives in Pretoria, South Africa with her two German Shepherds and is currently working on her first fiction novel.
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 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.
Stephen Symons is a former lecturer, graphic designer and poet. His poetry has been published in journals (including: New Contrast, Carapace, New Coin, Prufrock, Aerodrome, Umlanga ) and various anthologies. He holds a Masters in Creative Writing from UCT and is currently busy with a PhD in African Studies. He lives in Oranjezicht with his wife and two children.
Marike Beyers lives in Grahamstown, where she spends most of her time surrounded by books, papers, the buzz of internet pages. Balance is a difficult thing, as is the wind. She gets herself tangled up in letters and does not drive. On the other hand, she says, “Thunderstorms are magnificent beings. And then there is poetry that reaches into stillness.” Her collection of poems, On Another Page, was published with Aerial Publishing in 2011.
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.
Pakama Mlokoti, born on May 12 1994 in Mthatha, is currently based in Port Elizabeth pursuing a career in poetry. She is a writer, peformer and film maker in progress.
Pakama began competitive poetry in 2013 winning the Candlelight slam and Consent is Sexy Poetry slam. She also came second place on the Udubs Got Talent finals.
She has performed at various stages across the country including the Inzync Sessions in Cape Town, the Word N Sound stage in Johannesburg as well as Atheneaum Little Theatre in Port Elizabeth.
She also represented Eastern Cape in the National Slam For Your Life finals at the Soweto theatre where she won and is current a National Slam Champion.
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
Jeannie Wallace McKeown writes poetry and prose creatively; works at a desk in a university but has also been a freelance writer for the past six years covering academic lectures, seminars, book launches and interviewing interesting people; has had creative pieces published in literary journals and online; mother of two boys who can no longer be described as small; in a steady co-parenting relationship with an ex-husband, resolutely single and using poetry as one means of meeting this life head-on.
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.
Jane Berg is a photojournalist, poet, and writer, working in Grahamstown, South Africa. She is currently completing her degree in Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University. She majored in English and is a member of the Cycle of Knowledge Performance Poetry Group. She was awarded the Keven Carlean Scholarship for Academic Achievement in Journalism for 2013, and first place for the 2015 Foto Fence Competition, Portrait Category. Her work is concerned with gender and environmental issues. Born in Brazil and raised between England and South Africa, her accent confuses most people. Her poetry is a way to, as Rilke said, “live the questions” of identity and belonging.
Ntsika Tyatya is a writer, poet, spoken word performer who is from Nelson Mandela Bay, he has been active in the poetry scene for the past 12 years. After co-producing weekly poetry sessions in Port Elizabeth in 2006, he created SLAM ( Student’s Literature and Arts Movement) in 2008, which was the first slam poetry society at Cape Peninsula University of Technology. He was the headliner and finalist in the Cape Town poets search competition, Poetry Delight, as well as a headliner at the East London weekly poetry sessions; Brute Force. 2012 he was one of the headlining poets at the National Book Week. He has graced the stages with Luka Lesson (AUS), Lesego Rampolokeng, Lebo Mashile, Ntsiki Mazwai, Bongeziwe Mabandla, Don Mattera, Afurakhan, The Brother Moves on, Zubz, Mxo, Tumi to name few. In 2014 he partnered with Word and Sound, as the Eastern Cape facilitator in their Slam Your Life national competition that was held in Grahamstown.
He currently pursues a BA in Corporate Communication and has assisted with conceptualising both Maxhosa exhibitions in 2013 and 2014. He was part of the company that assisted in bringing Ian Kamau (Canada), Tutu Puoane (Holland) Vatiswa Ndara (SA), to Nelson Mandela Bay. He freelances in communication for various artists and businesses.
Deborah Seddon is an academic and a poet who was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, but is now based in Grahamstown, South Africa, where she teaches South African, African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and English Renaissance literature in the Rhodes University English Department. Her academic research is focused on South African orature and the transnational aesthetics of spoken word poetry. She is a founding member of the Cycle of Knowledge, a poetry organization consisting of students, school learners, and poets from the local community. The Cycle of Knowledge was created in 2013, and is a community engagement partnership between the Rhodes University English Department and the Writers’ Movement: a group of poets located in Joza, Grahamstown. The weekly sessions of the Cycle of Knowledge alternate between meetings on campus and in Joza, and provide a range of educational activities around writing, reading, and performing poetry. These include discussions of the work of South African and international poets, creative writing exercises, poetry ciphers and open mike sessions, editing and group feedback sessions on individual works, performances on campus, in town, and at local schools, recording poetry in video formats, collating biographies of the poets involved, and documenting the group’s activities.
Since 2006, Deborah has been a member of Aerial Publishing, a self-financing community publishing project based in Grahamstown, which received its start-up funding from the Centre for the Book in Cape Town. The committee annually calls for manuscripts of poetry and prose, mainly from Grahamstown writers, and chooses two per year to publish. Aerial Publishing edits, designs, and prints all their publications themselves, using funds raised by the sales of their books.
Deborah has published academic papers on South African literature and orature, African-American literature, South African engagements with Shakespeare, and on pedagogy in post-apartheid South Africa. Some of her poems appear in Writing From Here and Aerial.
Rosamund Stanford grew up on a farm in East Griqualand, South Africa, and studied literature, history and politics at Cape Town University. She has worked as a script writer and an editor in education and IT publishing, and is now a contract writer and editor. She has written non-fiction books about HIV and short fiction. Her poetry has appeared in New Coin, in the anthology In the Heat of Shadows – South African poetry 1996-2013, and has been translated into French. Her collections of poems are The Peeling of Skies (Aerial Publishing 2004) and The Hurricurrent (Deep South 2011).
Azola Dayile is a spoken-word poetry artist, literature scholar and all-round lover of the word. He hails from the streets of KwaZakhele in the windy city of Port Elizabeth, South Africa where he was born and bred for the past 20-something-odd-years.
His passion for reading and writing emanated from a very young age, having been involved in spelling and reading groups and contests from the tender age of seven years. However, it is only in high school that he became conscious of his writing and that is when he formally began writing poetry, even though never sharing it beyond his immediate peers.
In 2012 he joined the Culture Consciousness Society, hoping to grow his craft and become better at what he had been doing for some time.
All thanks to the universal forces of attraction, Azola met with up two fellow artists in Sisonke Papu and Unathi Slasha, with whom he co-founded and launched the Resonance Poetry Movement society at NMMU in March 2013.
His has since performed both inside and outside the Eastern Cape, has been published in local journals (also due to be published in the June .issue of the New Coin) and has had his worked featured on Radio L2K, a community radio station based in Uitenhage.
Megan van der Nest was born and raised in Johannesburg and currently lives in Grahamstown, where she is a postgraduate student at Rhodes University, working towards a PhD in English Literature. She holds two Masters Degrees, one in Philosophy and one in Creative Writing. She has worked as a Philosophy lecturer at the University of Fort Hare, and as a facilitator for the annual creative writing course offered by the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University. She studied music as an undergraduate and was a member of the East Cape Opera Company for two years. She now sings with the Rhodes University Chamber Choir. Her poetry has been published in New Coin, Aerial and ITCH Online, and her poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Rhino (after Wallace Stevens) was included in the 2012 anthology For Rhino in a Shrinking World, edited by Harry Owen. The inspiration for her poetry is drawn from simple moments of family life and from the natural world.
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.
Sisonkepapu is a dynamic personality. Close observers of his work claim that he has a provocative poetic skill and has established himself as a prominent poetic voice within the Eastern Cape. Being a professor of literature, his focus extends beyond the academy and community, and has a penchant for critical engagement through writing and development of budding writers like himself. His poem was added into the syllabus for a Poetry course at NMMU in 2014 and 2015, and offered his insights into the critical revelation in the piece, and the art of poetic writing and literary interpretation in the Poetry lectures. The Resonance Poetry Movement, a poetry society he co-founded, facilitates creative writing workshops and has published an anthology, hosted local and International acts such as Ian Kamau and Luka Lesson.
Crystal Warren grew up in Port Elizabeth but now lives in Grahamstown where she works at the National English Literary Museum. She has edited New Coin poetry magazine and taught a creative writing course. In-between she manages to occasionally do some writing of her own.
Mishka Hoosen was born in Johannesburg and completed an MA in Creative Writing at Rhodes University. She is currently completing an MA in Anthropology, with particular focus on gender, sexuality, violence, and embodiment theory. She has a love of Cohiba cigars, airplane rides, Ancient Greek, and soda floats. Her book of nonfiction, Hollow the Bones, is forthcoming from Deep South Books in August 2015.
Allan Kolski Horwitz grew up in Cape Town. Between 1974 and 1985 he lived in the Middle East, Europe and North America, returning to live in Johannesburg in 1986. Since then he has worked in the trade union and social housing movements. He continues to be a writer in various genres as well as being an educator and activist. He is a member of the Botsotso Jesters poetry performance group and of the Botsotso Publishing editorial board.
His books of poetry are entitled Saving Water and There are Two Birds at My Window; in addition he has been published widely in various anthologies such as We Jive like This, Dirty Washing and Essential Things. His short fiction is contained in three collections: Un/common Ground, Out of the Wreckage and Meditations of a Non-White White. He has also written a children’s parable entitled Blue Wings and five plays, The Pump Room, Comrade Babble, Boykie and Girlie, Jerico and Book Marks.
“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
TJ Dema is a Botswana based poet who runs SAUTI, an events, arts and performance management organization. She was the Chairperson of The Writers Association of Botswana from 2010 to 2012 and a founding member (alumni) of Botswana’s acclaimed Exoduslivepoetry! collective, who coordinated Botswana’s sole annual poetry festival between 2004 and 2009.
A 2005/06 participant in the British Council’s Crossing Borders project, she has since participated in a number of their initiatives including the 2007/08 Power in the Voice(PIV) initiative as mentor to the PIV national champions.
In 2010 she was guest writer for the University of Warwick’s International Gateway for Gifted Youth program. In 2008 she was in India for the Delhi International Festival of the Arts, and in 2010 she was a main stage act at the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA), Shakespeare and co’s Festivalandco in France as well as the World Wide Words festival in Denmark. In 2011 she was part of the Poetry Africa tour, a 5 city Southern African initiative of the University of Kwazulu Natal’s Center for Creative Arts. She is part of a bi-continental, multi country eclectic ensemble called Sonic Slam Chorus who debuted their poetry infused soundscapes at HIFA 2011 and returned in 2012. Recently she participated in a series of events linked to the London Cultural Olympiad.
Between August and November 2012 I was based out of Iowa City as one of the International Writing Program writers-in-residence.
Anthony ‘Ty’ Ngachira is a 22 year old from Kenya. The budding lawyer took an interest in poetry while in high school but actively pursued it while at university. He has performed at Kenya Slam Africa, Kwani Open Mic, Fatuma’s Voice and Poetry under Stars. He loves poetry because it allows him to be who he wants to be. His work mirrors the African society he has grown up in.
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
Harold Lee Rush appeared in the first Black-produced dramatic TV series in the U.S., “Bird of the Iron Feather” on Chicago’s Public Television Station WTTW. During this time, he also performed with various Black theatre organizations in a variety of roles.
In 1982, Harold’s broadcasting talents were discovered at Chicago’s WGCI radio as the producer and co-host of the powerhouse morning show, first with Bob Wall (as the only Black-White morning duo in a major market), then with Doug Banks, where Rush created the “Front Page” segment, which has been copied in morning shows across the country. In the decade at the Gannett-owned company, Rush hosted broadcasts all over the U.S. and around the world, including London, Senegal, Jamaica and the Bahamas, becoming one of the most well-known media personalities in Chicago.
Rush has also authored internationally award winning poetry and is much in demand as a Spoken Word artist. 2005 brought Rush to WKKC FM, the official radio station of the City Colleges of Chicago as a Broadcaster and Instructor for students in the Media Communications Programs.
You can hear “Live with Harold Lee Rush” Tuesdays & Fridays 10AM – 2PM CT on 893FM WKKC and www.WKKC.FM.
Website: www.HAROLDLEERUSH.com