SF International Poetry Festival: July 22 - 26

Information about this unique international festival, which will feature Zimbabwe's Ignatius Mabasa, can be found at SFIPF.

I am going to this one!

About the Festival

Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco Poet Laureate emeritus Jack Hirschman, Friends of the San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco Public Library present the second biennial San Francisco International Poetry Festival, July 23-27, 2009. The SFIPF takes place at the Palace of Fine Arts, public libraries and various venues throughout San Francisco. All events are free and open to the public.

This year’s landmark event will be co-hosted by Hirschman, California Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes and San Francisco Poet Laureate Diane di Prima. San Francisco Poet Laureate emeritus Lawrence Ferlinghetti will be presented with a special honor. Robert Mailer Anderson and Nicola Miner are the Honorary Chairs of the SFIPF.

The festival honors San Francisco’s great legacy of hosting and encouraging cross cultural dialogue. In 2007 the first ever SFIPF, a three-day extravaganza, drew thousands of people from the Bay Area and beyond to venues and celebrations throughout the City, including a street party in North Beach, youth events, book signings, translation workshops and more.

Since the 2007 Festival, Friends of the SFPL has presented smaller poetry festivals in a variety of languages, such as the Iranian Literary Arts Festival, Vietnamese Poets of the Diaspora and Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latino Poetry, in their ongoing effort to continue to build cultural bridges, celebrate the literary arts and foster international dialogue.

Comments

Masibanda said…
Thanks for posting this link.Mabasa will be launching his children's book during the festival.
June 23, 2009 at 3:20 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Abuja Writers' Forum Call for Submissions

Wordsbody has announced the following call for submissions: CAVALCADE literary journal, devoted to publishing original stories, poems,one-act plays, reviews, critical essays and art from an African perspective,will debut in October 2008 with a special edition. The tri-annual journal, a project of the Abuja Writers' Forum (AWF), is now seeking submissions for the second and third editions. Deadline: October 30, 2008 See more details here: Contribute to Cavalcade.
Read more

Roland Mhasvi's Flowers

Image
This is the cover of my copy of Roland Masvi's Flowers of Yesterday, a collection I reviewed in 1996 for The Herald. I was going through my old stuff when I saw this book in my old collection.  As I was flipping through the pages, I saw the cut-out for the original review, which in part reads: "This is a collection of highly esoteric poetry..., which can be charged of what Afrocentric scholars have described as 'piles of esoterica and ostentatious erudition'... The language is to the ordinary reader opaque, the imagery is inaccessible and the symbolism is surprisingly unusual but invitingly novel...real food for scholars."   The review just reminds me of the Chinweizu days, when we, as university students, had rediscovered African literature and its theory. Talking about Afrocentricity had a certain appeal, and we were looking at a lot of writing through the lenses of this newly-discovered Afrocentricity. Looking back, perhaps there was more in Mhasvi's poe
Read more

FREEDOM, a poem on South Africa by Afzal Moolla

Freedom The shackles have been cast off. Chains broken. People once squashed, under the jackboot of Apartheid, are free. Free at last! Freedom came on the 27th day in that April, 1994. Freedom from prejudice. From institutionalised racism. From being relegated to second-class citizenship. Freedom came and we danced. We cried. We ululated as we elected our revered Mandela. President Nelson Mandela. Our very own beloved 'Madiba'. Black and white and brown and those in-between, All hues of this rainbow nation, rejoiced as we breathed in the air of freedom and democracy. Today we pause. We remember. We salute. The brave ones whose sacrifices made this day possible, on that 27th day of April, 18 years ago. Today we dance. We sing. We ululate. We cry. Tears of joy and tears of loss. Of remembrance and of forgiveness. Of reconciliation and of memories. Today we pause. We acknowledge the tasks ahead. The hungry. The naked. The destitut
Read more