The world’s biggest online archive of pan-African poetry Badilisha Poetry X-Change, will be hosting a love poetry event Cape Town to celebrate the end of the Badilisha Road Trip – a trip into the African continent to meet and record the work of the poets who live and work here.
The Badilisha Poetry Pan-African event will take place on December 4th 2015 at The Beautiful Life, located at 70 – 72 Bree Street in Cape Town. It 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. This 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 #BPXRoadTrip started in July 2015 targeting 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 the archive, but the exercise also provided Badilisha with 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, for more information visit www.africacentre.net and our social media pages: Badilisha Poetry X-Change on both Facebookand Twitter, as well as Mxit.