Poetry Africa Biographies - page 4 of 6
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 Kgafela Magogodi (South Africa)
Lebogang Mashile (South Africa)
Don Mattera (South Africa)
Patricia Nolan (Ireland)
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Kgafela Magogodi ( South Africa)
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" Reading … listening to Kgafela oa Magogodi’s poetry and song is a shattering experience. His linguistic chisels go far beyond ‘causing blisters in the eardrums of society’. They are like a shattered mirror, with each piece of glass throwing at you a reflection, an image of its own. His art is not something that you can fix a label on without going drastically wrong." (Phaswane Mpe).
Magogodi is a Kwai-Jazz poet, Spoken Word Theatre Director, film scholar and academic based in the Wits School of Dramatic Arts where he is a part-time lecturer in African Cinema and Oral Performance and Rap/Dub Poetry Studies. He is also a budding screenwriter having written a short film script, Yeoville Blues & Valentines (1997), and co-written a feature film script, Shoot First Laugh Last (1998).
His self-published poetry includes three pamphlets entitled Book of Revelashinz (1998), Love Thighs Lies (1997) and Untamed Lovelines (1996) and he has also published poems in magazines and literary journals such as New Coin. Magogodi’s work is now read and heard in Europe and America as well as South Africa where he regularly gives talks and workshops and performs with a jazz band in pubs and cultural festivals. Locally the Steve Biko Foundation invited him to facilitate poetry workshops, the highlight of which was the activity "The Writer Then and Now: South/ern African Writers in Conversation With Chinua Achebe" held on Robben Island, September 2002. The success of this workshop earned Magogodi the rare honour of being the first recipient of the Biko Fellowship.
Kgafela oa Magogodi is currently writing a PhD thesis, provisionally entitled "TALKING B(L)ACK: Black Images in the Making of Black Cinema in South Africa". This study displays his enthusiasm for exploring complex questions that confront South Africa and other African countries, especially around the social roles of Black intellectuals and the importance of cultural practice in ensuring a vibrant civil society. Magogodi is also currently completing a volume of prose and poetry, entitled to sink the censorship.
Publications:
Thy Condom Come, New Leaf, 2002
the carrot
the carrot attracts a crooked habit
rabbits cross the floor to chew the rot
vote right
there’s no carrot on the left
the parrot sings praises cos the carrot
is in the pot
the only truth to the tooth is the carrot
liars strangle no more they dangle the carrot
to suck you into the rot
they put the carrot in your pocket
to keep you quiet
no more riot
no more riot
no more riot
just the grinding of rot
the carrot dance is a national sport
see how they run like judas iscariot
to grab the all mighty carrot
now children are taught
that life is about who eats more carrot
to excrete more rot
lairs raise the flag of the carrot
even in the toilet
no more riot
no more riot
no more riot
just the grinding of rot
you’re a true patriot
even if you get caught
stealing the carrot
nobody takes you to court
it matters not if you forgot
to give to the poor a cut
of the carrot.
poem cc K Magogodi
Lebogang Mashile ( South Africa)
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 ‘The use of drama and the creative arts has been essential to all struggles all over the planet, including our own struggle here in South Africa .’
Lebogang Mashile (1979) is a young performer, writer and facilitator who was born to exiled South African parents in the United States . She has been living, studying, learning and growing in South Africa since her family came back home in 1994. Mashile studied law and international relations at Wits University , but realised she could best make a positive contribution to the transformation of South Africa by honouring her love for writing and poetry. She has since performed in Johannesburg , Durban and Cape Town , sharing the stage with Don Mattera, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Lesego Rampolokeng, Saul Williams and Sarah Jones, and others.
Mashile says the use of drama and the creative arts has been essential to all struggles all over the planet, including our own struggle here in South Africa . It will continue to be essential in the new struggle against the enemy of self. Passionate about the ways that art can be used to bring about healing and positive transformation, Mashile has spent the last year working as a life skills facilitator, and has conducted numerous workshops on HIV/AIDS, gender, personal development, team building relationships, sex and sexuality. She recently organised the Youth Empowerment and Networking Imbizo in Soweto , with the objective to inspire young people through art and to motivate them to greater heights of creativity through the successes of peer role models, and with the view to creating a positive and productive youth community.
Mashile’s workbook, From Our Mothers Tongues, aims to showcase South African women’s poetry, as well as her own, to shed light on the true lives and struggles of South African women in their own words, thus creating a process where the art is not only the catharsis, but finding the true voice.
Sisters
I see the wisdom of eternities
in ample thighs
belying their presence as adornments
to the temples of my sisters
old souls breath
in the comfort of chocolate thickness
that suffocates Africa ’s angels
who dance to the rhythm of the universe’s womb
though they cannot feel its origins in their veins
Blessed am I to be love in the temple of my own skin
my nappy centre kisses the sun
in a harmony divine
devoid of the ugly that does not know this as God
but the sons of oppression
never gave sisters
loaves to feed the hungry fury in their bellies
nor did they teach them to fish for spirit
So I pray
to the voices that whisper in my soft curves
for the lionesses of my blood
to hear the songs of the cool reeds
to feel the green blood beat of cataclysm on their breasts
and to know the embrace of freedom
in nourishing silences
where their radiant ebony vessels
are reflections of their souls
poem cc L Mashile
Don Mattera ( South Africa )
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 ‘My mission is to help remove pain and suffering from people’s lives, to remove an invisible chain. My work is a shadow of my actions.’
If birth, participation in rich and varied events, and reflection about these events at a later stage are qualifications, then few people are better qualified to write about all these elements – community, criminality, resistance – than Don Mattera. This renowned poet, writer, social and political leader and activist, was awarded his PhD in Literature at the University of Natal, Durban, a far cry from his youth in cosmopolitan Sophiatown, where he became the leader of one of its most notorious gangs, The Vultures. After seven years of terror upon the inhabitants of Sophiatown, during which period he survived three attempts on his life and several periods of imprisonment, he joined the ANC Youth League and transformed from gangland boss to political activist. Mattera became involved in the politics of the ‘Black Consciousness’ movement and helped to form the Union of Black Journalists as well as the Congress of South African writers. From 1973 to 1981 he was subjected to banning orders and house arrest restrictions
Mattera, who has published collections of short stories, children’s stories and plays as well as the renowned Azanian Love Song, was awarded the Steve Biko Prize for his autobiography, Memory is the Weapon. He has also won several international literary and humanitarian awards, the most treasured being the World Health Organization’s Peace Award from the Centre of Violence and Injury Prevention in 1997.
Don Mattera, once a gangland boss, is now a committed Muslim and deeply involved in the community in which he lives, interacting with street children, gangsters and participating in the rehabilitation of ex-prisoners. Mattera has worked as a journalist on The Sunday Times, The Mail & Guardian and The Sowetan, and is a popular motivational speaker.
Publications:
Azanian Love Song, Skotaville, 1983
Gone with the Twilight: A Story of Sophiatown, Zed Books (London), 1987
The Five Magic Pebbles (children’s literature), Skotaville, 1992
Dreaming Was Never Free
Oh my land
My earth
My beloved.
In this place of perpetuated poverty
Scattered dark eyes
Glow in the nightdust of Kangwane.
And love still speaks solemnly
Salted by uncompromising tears.
Deep, deep in the willing flesh
The first seeds clash
And memory is born.
And that which was Unseen
Comes to earth clothed in Song
Carrying our grief and expectation.
Though now
Our shadows flicker
In the liquid light of liberty,
A time will come, Beloved
When we will remember
Dreaming was never free,
And that to live and love and believe
Also meant we had to know and sing and die.
poem cc D Mattera
Patricia Nolan (Ireland)
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 '..life is a gift that is expressed through poetry, art and all other forms of human expression. Poetry is about searching for the right word to express my deepest feeling about a subject, it’s about touching a fibre in a reader.'
Patricia Nolan, described as one of the finest poets writing in Ireland today, was born in Dublin, Ireland, educated at Cape Town University, S.A., and lives in Paris, France, where she worked for Newsweek for several years. She teaches Journalism at the University of Paris II and runs poetry workshops in French secondary schools and teacher training colleges. During the last two years her poetry and short stories have been published in over 20 anthologies, magazines and literary journals in over 10 countries. Patricia Nolan has been a guest artist on both Irish and French Radio and is a member of the Société des Gens de Lettres in Paris, the Irish Writer’s Union, and the National Union of Journalists.
Nolan says her poetry reflects a perception of the world that is both familiar and strange. The private sphere is an exercise of tender memory while the public one is a form of reflection and a critique of contemporary reality which is full or irony, a world which is retold on her own terms through the art of poetry. Fred Johnson, the Irish critic and poet writes, "Patricia Nolan’s poetry contains the quiet lyricism of the better of her contemporaries at home, while at the same time it manages to sing on a register just a half-tone above them. They evoke profoundly European as well as Irish themes."
Publications:
Poète Toi-même, Le Castor Astral (Paris), 1999
Au Fils du Temps, Le Castor Astral (Paris), 2000
Travelling, Le Castor Astral (Paris), 2001
Arcade, L’Ecriture au Féminin (Quebec), 2001
Exit, Revue de Poésie Québecois, 2002
Encre Nomades, La Nuit Myrtide, 2002
Out to Lunch Anthology, Bank of Ireland, 2002
Poésie des Iles, The University of Corsica, 2002
Striptease, Le Castor Astral (Paris), 2003
(poem to come)
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