The 29th edition of Poetry Africa 2025 began on Monday, and the opening evening was a resounding success. Audiences at the Seabrooke’s Theatre were captivated by the opening keynote address by Professor Ari Sitas. Addressing the theme of this year’s festival,POETRY: ARCHITECTURE OF SOCIAL JUSTICE, his academic insight and activist history grappled with our current milieu and the role of poetry in understanding it. He was joined on stage by several poets who added their voices to the clarion call for a just world built on the scaffolding of creative pursuits.
For Malika Ndlovu, the evening was a special occasion. She first appeared on the Poetry Africa platform in 1998 and was raised in Kwa Zulu Natal. Her most recent publicationGriefseed addresses the losses that we all suffer, individually and communally and how grappling with that process can be a starting point for a healthier, happier community. Her creative path which has journeyed from Lueen Conning’s dismantling of apartheid classifications in her play A Coloured Place to her current role as a performance poet and applied arts facilitator, mirrors the growth of the festival itself. She was joined by Sarah Uheida, a Libyan born poet and essayist who now calls Stellenbosch home who shared poems from her anthology, Not This Tender. Reading from A Wound Cauterized in Light, speaking about “memories….porous with pain” her tender words touched everyone deeply. Her anthology is compiled of selections of ‘firsts’ – night, pangs, touches, and her poems wove an ethereal thread through the evening. The collection is a profound reflection of her personal journey but is one that resonates universally through a world where a record number of 123.2 million billion were forcibly displaced by the end of 2024. The words of Hope Netshivhambe were evocative and Dr Kole Odutola shared a poem inspired by the theme. The evening was invigorating and inspiring and left poetry lovers satiated.
The festival continues until the 11th of October and there are several opportunities to experience the wonder of poetry either in person or online. On Wednesday Dr. Nick Makoha, the Ugandan poet and playwright based in London and founder of Obsidian Foundation, will be in conversation with Ghanaian poet, academic, critic, actor, and musician Prof. Kwame Dawes. The Jamaican poet laureate speaks in his poem, A Cup of Trembling, of “The beginning of sorrow is the beginning of knowing, /and the beginning of knowing is ancient.”In the times of sorrow we currently live in, his insights are bound to be valuable. There are also poetry films and a celebration of 61 years of New Coin, the poetry literary journal focused on publishing poetry, reviews, commentary, and interviews related to poetry. The semifinals and finals of the slam poetry competition and other opportunities to hear poets share their poetry and speak about their work are numerous. Online sessions, which are accessible to all, will discuss the African Poetry Book Fund, African Poetry Journals and reveal the inner workings of a slam poetry competition.
Next year, in addition to celebrating a milestone 30 years, Poetry Africa will also host the 5thWorld Slam Poetry Competition. Director of the Centre for Creative Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Ismail Mahomed said, “Last night’s opening of the Poetry Africa Festival once again highlighted why spoken word poetry is so anchored to an activism for building a society based on social justice, human rights and dignity for all. As the world watches a genocide in real time the voices of spoken word poets are passionate in their calls for a deeper reaching out to touch each other with our common humanity.” If you are a parttime prose purist or a verse virtuoso, there is something for you in this rich and varied programme.