Voices Of Africa

Come and explore the SS Great Britain for a night of site specific spoken word, dance and poetry. Afrika Eye is teaming up with talent development programme Boat Poets and Bristol based spoken word organisation Raise The Bar to bring some of the hottest spoken word artists from the Uk and beyond, who will be responding to the theme Voices Of Africa. Line up includes:

Zena Edwards
Tjawangwa Dema
Saili Katebe
Ripton Lindsay

Hosted on board the iconic SS Great Britain there could not be a better place to think about journeys, history and heritage

18:30 – Explore the Ship
19:30 – Performance Starts

Tickets:
£8 Full Price
£5 concessions and under 25 yrs

Cash only saleS on the door

Zena Edwards is a London-based performance poet, writer and musician. Her vibrant poetry is inspired by her experiences of travel, particularly through Africa, as well as traditional African music and song. She often accompanies her work with mbira, kalimba and marimba (thumb pianos). Zena has performed at WOMAD, The London Jazz Festival, Poetry International at the Royal Festival Hall, The URB Hip Hop Festival (Helsinki), Glastonbury as well as many others.

Tjawangwa Dema is a poet, educator and arts administrator. Her collectionThe Careless Seamstress(University of Nebraska Press, 2019) won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry. Her chapbook Mandible (Slapering Hol Press, 2014) was selected for the African Poetry Book Fund’s New-Generation African Poets series. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and has given readings and taught workshops in over twenty countries. She was 2012 Fall Resident at the University of Iowa and a 2016 Writer in Residence at the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern University. She has recorded a multi-lingual audio anthology featuring 12 leading Batswana poets and coordinated the recording of over twenty poets for the pan African poetry archive Badilisha. Her poems have been re-worked by bands into lyrics, used for theatre and dance collaborations, recorded as videos and dropped from a helicopter over London as well as translated into languages including Spanish, Chinese, German and Swedish. In 2019 she gave the Ohio University African Studies spring lecture and co-produced the Africa Writes – Bristol festival.

Saili Katebe is a Wiltshire based writer, workshop facilitator and performance poet. Usually writing under the pen name “The Blissful Nomad” he is a keen explorer of the possibilities that language and arts have to offer. In love with rhythm and rhyme he uses the page and the stage to share his exploration of the lived experience through language and story. Throughout Afrika Eye Saili will be a Boat Poet in residence on board the SS Great Britain.

Ripton Lindsay is a choreographer, dancer, dance tutor, lyricist, MC, DJ, poet and writer. He was born in Jamaica and grew up immersed in Jamaican music and dance, specifically the art of Kumina dance of the Maroon communities. Drawing on many traditional styles, he has developed his own distinctive approach whilst staying true to his authentic roots. He has been living and working in the UK and internationally since 2000 working as a dance tutor and cultural educator. Using the language of dance and music as an educational tool, Ripton has inspired and connected young people from differing backgrounds, abilities and cultures. Recently this work has taken him to Northern Ireland working on collaborative projects with ‘Beyond Skin’ in areas of continuing conflict.

Access information: There is detailed information about access around the ship and site on the SS Great Britain website https://www.ssgreatbritain.org/your-visit/access-all

Please note that the event will take place in the first class dining saloon.

If you have access requirements of any kind, we encourage you to get in touch with us in advance at afrikaeye@gmail.com and we will endeavour to make your experience as accessible as possible.