Friday 29 August 2008

Celebration


On 28th August 2008, I hosted a Two Year Anniversary Shangwe Poetry Evening at the Poetry Café. In keeping with the Shangwe name, the theme was Celebration.

So while the 'Celebration' chocolates were being passed around, the audience was being soothed by the entertaining and soulful open mic performers: Paula David, Christine Bell, referred to me by Ranjan Book Publications http://www.bkpublications.com/ Ursula Troche, Akuba and Devon "The Split" Jones http://www.thesplit.ca/ an international visitor originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba, residing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on vacation and flying home the next morning. Devon was referred to me by Jacob Sam-La Rose as she was looking for venues to "drop some knowledge".

Thank you to those who attended and performed, particularly Akuba, who has consistently supported Shangwe since August 2006 with 8 performances, often writing poems specifically for Shangwe’s themed events, and has been Shangwe’s host on at least 3 occasions, including hosting my 2nd anthology’s book launch.

So it gives me great pleasure to honour Akuba’s support by awarding her with the title of Resident Poet, which means that she will have a permanent performance slot at Shangwe’s poetry events for one year. I will soon be in dialogue with Akuba as to her resident poet role, but I see the role as one that offers the freedom to write poetry and perform but this will not rule out any other forms of writing genre.