Arts writer
THE world’s biggest online archive of pan-African poetry, Badilisha Poetry X-Change, will host a live poetry event at the Beautifull Life Building in Bree Street on December 4.
The event will celebrate the end of the Badilisha Road Trip– a trip which saw the team heading across the African continent to meet and record the work of some of the poets who live and work in different regions.
The Badilisha Poetry Pan-African celebration will feature a host of award-winning internationally acclaimed poets like, TJ Dema from Botswana and South African living legend, Professor Keorapatse Willie Kgositsile.
Expect to also hear voices from Tanzania, Ethiopia and beyond.
The event is taking place with the support of the International Fund for the Promotion of Culture (IFPC) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco).
The road trip began in July and targeted eight African cities. From Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, they travelled on to Johannesburg, Gaborone and Maun in Botswana; then North to Dar Es Salaam, Zanzibar and Addis Ababa in East Africa.
The main motive of these travels was to actively grow Badilisha’s archive, but the exercise also provided the project with valuable insight into how the poetry scene functioned in different parts of the continent.
Badilisha also held poetry workshops in Maun and Dar Es Salaam, which were facilitated by renowned local poets in each respective city.
Badilisha Poetry X-Change is a project of the Africa Centre, and one of the project’s main aims is to explore how Pan-African cultural practice can be a catalyst for social change.
l www.africacentre.net