Poetry NonScenes

Are you an aspiring poet? Poetry NonScenes is for you! 

 

Dedicated to live poetry in South Africa, Poetry NonScenes provides a space for aspiring South African poets to perform and create. The project has been running since April 2024 and has included workshop events in Johannesburg and Pretoria. 

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These workshops were run at different locations to prompt participants to think about poetry in different ways and to address the following themes: 

 

Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre (18 April 2024): 

• Community building/belonging 

• Reparations/remembrance/healing 

• Equality/unity/diversity  

• Co-creating splace  

 

University of Pretoria, Library Auditorium (22 April 2024):    

• Why ‘struggle’ dominates literature 

• Expressing joy 

• The potential of poetry in future building  

• The creative power of the body  

 

The performances for the University of Pretoria event are available here. 

  

Select poems will be included in a dedicated anthology published by uHlanga Press.  

  

Future events will be organised soon, so please watch this space. Anyone who is interested is welcome to attend. However, preference is given to Matric learners and university students to help re-balance education’s current approach to poetry where written anthologies and canonical Anglophone poetry is currently preferred. Instead, Poetry NonScenes is determined to celebrate contemporary live South African poetry.  

  

Let’s reset the usual ways we do poetry!