Centre for Creative Arts

Ari Sitas (South Africa)

Publications:

Plays:

Marabi, 1982, Wits University Press

Dikhitsheneng, 1980, Wits University Press

Will of a Rebel, 1979, Wits University Press

Randlords and Rotgut, 1978, Ad Donker

Fantastical History of a Useless Man, 1976, Raven Press

Poetry:

Slave Trades, 2000, Deep South

Songs, Shoeshine and Piano, 1992 (collection included in anthology Essential Things)

Tropical Scars, 1989, COSAU

Novellas:

Etopia, 1992, Madiba Press

William Zungu - A Xmas Story, 1991, Buchu Books

Ari Sitas is a poet, dramatist and sociologist. A founder member of the Junction Avenue Theatre Company in Johannesburg, he was involved in most of its productions until 1982 when he moved to Durban. Sitas's involvement in popular and worker theatre since the 1970s has been widely celebrated and his broader writing and involvement as a leading intellectual in anti-Apartheid movements has left a trail of robust engagements within and outside the country. In 1978 he received the Olive Schreiner Award for his play Randlords and Rotgut, and in 1981 won an award for his video Howl at the Moon. His first collection of poetry met with much critical acclaim, and he followed this with a collection experimenting with musical form which was included in the anthology, Essential Things. Sitas's book, Slave Trades, a result of seven years of research and writing, is receiving tremendous reviews. His recently completed collection, The Reconstruction and Development Poems, promises to be his most disturbingly controversial with their precise and bleak analysis of current traumas in South Africa's transition. Sitas has also penned a libretto for an opera for composer Jurgen Brauninger, Dead Fish and Dreams of Love Again, which is going to be produced in 2002. Ari Sitas is considered to be one of the country's leading sociologists and has been elected by the International Sociological Association on the executive of its world council. Locally, he is seen to be one of the core exemplars of the African Renaissance movement. In 1999 Sitas was one of a group who inaugurated, through the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam, a global initiative linking creative work to contemporary issues of social justice.

Black Mamba Rising

Walked

past Clairwood

and the back road

by the railway track

where the Local met

to change the world

and count who was alive

the building dirty-white as

dilapidated as it should have always been

the clothing sweatshop on the second floor

still, uncleaned windows from 1966

and the bare staircase

where we had to negotiate a wheelchair -

three flights and a twisted back

and a goat -

to cut its throat for protection

and eat it with the guys

the goat: still owns a stain

in the emptied hall

with its leaking lavatories

from the fire-alarm exit

the eye sees the only change:

a dozen women and their stalls by the

railway entrance:

one tomato, two orange and a piece of cloth

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Dorothea Smartt (UK)

photo cc Sherlee Mitchell

Poetry featured in:

Penguin Book of New Black Writing, 2000, Penguin

Mythic Women/Real Women, 2000, Faber & Faber

Voice Memory Ashes, 1999, Women's Press

The Fire People, 1998, Payback Press

Love Shook My Senses, 1998, Women's Press

Flaming Words, Burning Images, 1996, SAKS Publications

Moving Beyond Boundaries, 1995, Pluto

Intimate Wilderness, 1991, Eighth Mountain Press (USA)

Dorothea Smartt, born and raised in London, is of Barbadian heritage. She is acknowledged as tackling multilayered cultural myths and the real life experiences of Black women with searing honesty. She was Brixton Market's first Poet-in-Residence and a former Attached Live Artist at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. Awarded several commissions and bursaries, she is a member of the Black Arts Alliance and an Afro-Style School 'graduate'. Her solo work, Medusa, is considered an 'outstanding Black example', and her poetry appears in several groundbreaking anthologies. Her collaborative performances include From You To Me To You (an Institute of Contemporary Arts, Live Arts Commission), and Home is Where the Heart Kicks (a Black Arts Alliance Commission). She continues to perform in Britain and abroad and lectures part time at Birkbeck College. In 2000 she was commissioned to write her first play, Fall Out, which successfully toured primary schools. In 2001 she will be a guest writer at Florida International University and Oberlin College. She is poetry editor of Sable (a litmag for writers and readers), while currently researching and developing new performance works. Dorothea Smartt's premier collection, Connecting Medium, will be published by Peepal Tree Press later this year. Smartt has been described by Apples and Snakes as "One of the most daring and exciting figures to emerge from London's poetry scene . constantly experimenting with both the form and content of her work, tackling the themes of identity, alienation and self-fulfillment with refreshing boldness. "

I'm in the market for hair

I, head down, and under wraps,

make for the hair express convenience,

a place, to market changes to maps

routing their way to Africa. With reverence

for style, innovation, re-creation, I am heir

to products for my fleeces' convalescence.

She says, "We're all women, and we all share,

this deep-rooted concern, to secure and shape

'Beautiful Beginnings' for our children's hair."

As for myself, I'll be a riot of colour. Drape

'Sleek Wigs' on my head, a daring new version

where hotcombs failed to tread. Take

'Pride of USA' and 'L.A. Trend' for my conversion

to a new cartography. Weaved against reversion.

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Valiant Swart (South Africa)

Discography

Mystic Boer

Dorpstraat Revisited

Kopskoot

Roekeloos

Deur die Donker Vallei

Valiant Swart and his band have been on the South African music scene since 1990. Valiant received his first guitar from his father in 1977 when he was eleven years old and he taught himself to play from a book of chords. He remembers the precise moment when everything clicked and he realised that he didn't want to be anything else other than a rock star. In 1979 he obtained his first electric guitar and started playing rock 'n roll and beginning to write his own songs. Merging influences from heavy metal, boeremusiek, Bob Dylan and the blues Valiant developed his own distinctive brand which he describes as bluesy country punk, bittersweet with a beat. Apart from hundreds of performances in clubs, bars and university campus gigs, he has performed at many festivals throughout the country including Splashy Fen, Oppikoppi, Rustler's Valley, Oudtshoorn and Grahamstown Arts Festivals, and was recently invited to perform in Utrecht, Holland. When asked what he sings about, he replied, "women, the long road, brandy, blood, bikes, wild animals and the stars and the moon". Valiant is a prominent contributor on Breyten Breytenbach's music project 'Om te Breyten". Writing and singing predominantly in Afrikaans he believes that the contemporary manifestations and mutations of the Afrikaans language provide exciting possibilities. Valiant Swart's depictions of South African life , both colloquial and acerbic, have made literary critics sit and take notice .

waar die dromers dwaal

in die kamers van die nag

in die uur van die uil

as die skaduwees wagstaan

en die bergwind huil

wentel my spirits

in @silwer spiral

oor die grense van die plekke

waar die dromers dwaal

die wind in die gordyne

en die wolke oor die maan

wink vir my en sweef

deur die bome in die laan

deur die mure in die gange

en die spieël in die portal

na die strate van die plekke

waar die dromers dwaal

daar waar die dromers dwaal

net links van die ewewig en regs van die balans

tussen die vorige geleentheid en die laaste kans

daar waar die eggo teen die weerklank slaan

daar kom jou drome vandaan

@splinternuwe môre

in die sakke van @jas

die dynserige einders

en die namiddag soos glas

ek hardloop oor die melkweg

om die laaste trein te haal

na die stasie in die sterre

waar die dromers dwaal

daar waar die dromers dwaal

net links van die ewewig en regs van die balans

tussen die vorige gelentheid en die laaste kans

daar waar die eggo teen die weerklank slaan

daar kom jou drome vandaan

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Hone Tuwhare (New Zealand)

Publications:

Shape-Shifter, 1997

Deep River Talk: Collected Poems, 1993

Short Back and Sideways, 1992

Mihi: Collected Poems, 1991

Was wirklicher ist als Sterben, 1985

Year of the Dog: Poems new and Selected, 1982

Selected Poems, 1980

Making a Fist of it (poems and stories), 1978

Wind Song and Rain, 1975

Something Nothing, 1974

Sapwood and Milk, 1972

Come Rain Hail, 1970

No Ordinary Sun, 1964

Hone Tuwhare (Ngapuhi - Ngati Korokoro, Ngati Tautahi, Te Popoto Uri-o-Hau) was born in 1922 in Kaikohe, but moved to Auckland when he was 9. After leaving school he became a boilermaker and, during his time of apprenticeship at the Otahuhu Railway Workshops, Tuwhare met the poet R.A.K. Mason, who encouraged him to write, and, like Mason, he became politically involved in trade-union organisations and was a member of the Communist Party until the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. He then began writing seriously and his earliest poems appeared in magazines such as New Zealand Poetry Yearbooks and NZ Listener. His first published collection, No Ordinary Sun, appeared in 1964 to widespread acclaim and was reprinted ten times during the next thirty years, one of the most widely read individual collections of poems in New Zealand history. In 1969 he was the Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago (and again in 1974), and in the 1970s Tuwhare became actively involved in Maori cultural and political initiatives. He was an organiser of the first Maori Writers and Artists Conference at Te Kaha in 1973 and participated in the Maori Land March of 1975. In 1983 he was the University of Otago's Hocken Library Research Fellow, and this revitalised and extended his interest in Maori history and language. Hone Tuwhare's full-length play, In the Wilderness Without a Hat (perf. 1985), is a deeply personal marae-based tribal drama begun in the wake of his participation in the Land March and published in He Reo Hou: 5 Plays by Maori Playwrights (1991). He spent most of 1985 in Berlin where he wrote Was wirklicher ist als Sterben. In 1991 he was the University of Auckland Literary Fellow and in 1992 he was awarded a Scholarship in Letters by the QEII Arts Council of New Zealand. Tuwhare's work resists identification in terms of 'Maoriness', and his major concerns have remained those of love, friendship, the life of the feelings, and the experience of loss and death.

SOMETHING NOTHING

I tried to write a sonnet once on top

of Time: equipped myself with pen and clock

and yank of thread and chewing gum. But words

on zephyr light as fog came thickly crowding

in through open windows overlooking

sea and slip-shod rocks. I tied them up

and sealed the ends. I wound it up then, brushed

it down, and stood it on its whirring feet

and saw it rocket-like go off the end

of my big toe (stuck out for hygienic

purposes as well as launching-pad)

Alas, the sonnet did not soar to high

impossibilities of sun and stars,

but fell to pieces on the rocks below.

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Sheri-D Wilson (Canada)

Publications:

sweet taste of lightning; 2000 (CD)

The Sweet Taste of Lightning, 1998, Arsenal Pulp Press

Girl's Guide to Giving Head, 1996, Arsenal Pulp Press

Swerve, 1993, Arsenal Pulp Press

Bulls Whip & Lambs Wood, 1989, Petarade Press

This Mama of Dada was born in 1958 in Calgary, Canada, and determined early on to leap barriers and pursue her poetic muse. At age 17 she became an explorer and traveller, living everywhere from Los Angeles to New York, though she did return for a stint of performance art education at Mount Royal College. After working in London, six years ago Wilson returned to Calgary, which remains her base, though she still travels frequently. Sheri-D Wilson has been called one of North America's most compelling "action" poets. Her unparalleled performance style is rich with erotic jazz, infused with a sharp feminist sensibility and laced with a dangerous wit. She despises materialism and sees the normal conventions of marriage, children and consumerism as unnecessary. Her live performance/readings include: The Vancouver International Writers Festival, Bumbershoot (Seattle), Harbourfront Reading Series (Toronto), Spoken Word Festival (Montreal), PanCanadian Wordfest (Calgary/Banff), Brainwash Reading Series (San Francisco) and The Small Press Festival (New York). She participated in the Word Up project, which included a spoken word anthology, a CD with Virgin Records, and a video with MuchMusic (Toronto). Sheri-D 's work is also featured in Poetry Nation (Vehicule Press). Her play, Confession: A Jazz Play, was performed at Tamahnous Theatre, Vancouver, and she was invited to the Woman's Millennium Project at the Playwright's Workshop in Montreal to work on her new play, The Eternal Eyes of Leticia Knight. Ha rd work and independence continue to be Sheri-D Wilson's themes. Sheri-D's debut CD, Sweet Taste of Lightning , based on her previous writings and two new works, is masterfully arranged by hip-guitarist Russell Broom. This collection perfectly matches word with music in a seamless performance of sexy, humorous social commentary.

THE SWEET TASTE OF LIGHTNING

she had a house full of candles

she never burned

lightning struck the world white

crashed the roof - sky hitting

tones of darkness - slam

she wasn't wearing her underwire bra

it flew through the veins of her house

hit the heart - blew everything out

all the appliances spoke at once

in magnetic tongues

the blind dog barked - snapped at the air

ran into furniture

all the mirrors flashed black

black mirrors - she couldn't see herself

everything was running

away from her, singed

electric candy swirled on her tongue

the sweet taste of lighting.

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Vusi Ximba (South Africa)

Discography (Partial)

n/a

please check frequently for updates

Vusi Ximba is an accordionist/singer from Mandeni on the North Coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal. His bold adaptation and relocation of traditional Zulu styles into contemporary territories have resulted in a unique mix of mbaqanga, township jive and Zulu rap. Embellished with a strong sense of humour and delivered with deadpan panache Vusi's songs have made him a hugely popular character in a niche unlike any other. Essentially Vusi is a master story-teller using the medium of music. A number of his controversial songs have been banned from Zulu Radio because of his outspoken and sometimes bawdy lyrics. The unassuming elderly legend is presently based in Pietermaritzburg,

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