Karina Festival

Festival of Poetry – 4 November 2023

Earlier this year, the McGregor Poetry Festival announced a hiatus for a year. The organisers are taking a well-deserved break. The Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Collective and the Rosebank Writers’ Circle decided to step into the breach and organised a once-off event to celebrate poetry at a day-long poetry festival here in Cape Town. Please join us for these exciting poetry panels, taking place at two venues, the Bertha House and Youngblood-Africa, on 4 November 2023.

Events are free! Books will be on sale throughout the day.

Hope to see all poetry lovers there!

Karina Author, Book, Event

Rosebank Writers: Book talk with Kerry Hammerton

Photo credit: Digby Young

A poetry morning next to the fireplace. Rosebank Writers and Friends gathered yesterday next to a cosy fire to listen to Kerry Hammerton speak about and read from her latest poetry collection, afterwards. I (Karina) had the privilege to ask the questions. It was a beautiful way to begin the weekend: hearing Kerry speak about her work was nourishment for the soul and the mind.

Thank you to all who attended, especially all the Rosebank Writers. Thank you also to Kim Gurney for recording the conversation and Digby Young for the photographs.

The Rosebank Writers have been meeting for almost a year now and are going from strength to strength.

All photographs: Digby Young

Karina Author, Book, Event

A panya route in Rosebank

One of the creatives Kim Gurney interviewed for her latest book, Panya Routes: Independent art space in Africa (Motto Books, 2022), Nana Oforiatta Ayim, the founder and director of the ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge in Accra, said that she “wanted to set this place up so that others like me who wanted to write and express something could come and have a home, a place to think collectively, create, push boundaries.”

Earlier today, Kim was in discussion about Panya Routes with Joy Watson – both belong to the Rosebank Writes group, recently founded by Kim and other writers who live and work in and/or are affiliated with the suburb of Rosebank, Cape Town (we have a sister organisation in Johannesburg). The event was hosted by another member, Shireen Mall, in her beautiful lounge that was transformed into an independent art space for the day. Writers, readers and creatives gathered to celebrate the publication of Panya Routes (which Karavan Press and Protea Distribution have the honour of distributing in South Africa along independent panya routes of their own) and listen to Kim and Joy discuss the book, its origins and consequences.

It was a morning of illumination, and I cannot thank Kim, Joy, Shireen and all who attended, enough for inspiring us all to search for our individual panya routes which allow us to be creative in spaces where, in the words of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, “the progress of any one person is not dependent on the downfall of another” (quoted in Panya Routes).