Poetry Africa 2024

South Africa’s Poetry Africa 2024 guests known

Poetry Africa 2024 will be hosted in Durban, Bloemfontein, and Johannesburg, South Africa from October 3 – 12, 2024. The theme is “Poetry: Somehow We Survive”

Poetry Africa is an international poetry festival first hosted by the Centre for Creative Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa in 1996.  Since that first edition, Durban and other cities have hosted some of the leading names in poetry across Africa and abroad. It features poets in performances, panel discussions, campus and school visits, poetry exchanges, book launches, open mic sessions, and a slam jam competition.

The theme for 2024, Poetry: Somehow We Survive, is inspired by one of the poems by Denis Brutus, a leading South African poet, activist, educator, and journalist who died in December 2009. This year marks the centenary of his birth (November 28, 1924). It is intended to inspire poets to write as a response to how the human spirit survives and is resilient to the constantly changing political, social and technological changes that impacts on our lives.

The guests come from the host country South Africa as well as Palestine, Nigeria, Estonia, Kenya, Trinidad and Tobago, Germany, and include Nkateko Masinga, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, David Otieno AKA Slim Shaka, Dshamilja Roshani, Mfundithepoet Feni (Asiphe Nicholas Feni), Khanyisa Mabasa, Ramatswi Solly, Joonas Veelmaa, Jonathan Lefenya, Sello Chokoe, Busisiwe Veronica Mahlangu, Masai Sepuru, Hatem Al-Shehri, Vuyokazi Ngemntu, Mosab Abu Toha, Bash Amuneni, Miksi, Thando Fuze, Vus’umuzi Phakathi, Mandisa Vundla, among others.

Apart from the usual festivities, South African poets have a chance of winning the grand prize of Twenty Thousand Rand at the Poetry Africa annual Slam Poetry Competition.

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