I LOVE YOU Workshop - Windhoek Namibia...

Simon (Sand) & khoi gxam

A LOVE LETTER FOR THE EPOCH

Cape Town writer Michael Wentworth launches the second edition of his poetry collection

When: Saturday 12 October

Where: Bolo’bolo – 76 Lower main Road Observatory

Time: 14h00

Cape Town-born writer, director Michael Wentworth, who currently resides in the Great Karoo where he is working on a new novel, returns to the city in October after a sold tour of Namibia, for a reading of selected poems from the second edition of his collection of poetry titled A Love Letter for the Epoch.

Born in Lansdowne, Cape Town to a diversely talented family, Mikey, as he is affectionately known to friends and colleagues, patiently and determinedly nurtured his dream to be a writer since his primary school days.

Wentworth became independent from a very young age, traveling continuously between Cape Town and Windhoek to visit his Namibian family. These trips soon morphed into traversing across the length and breadth of Southern Africa, profoundly nourishing and honing his skills through many encounters and projects with a broad spectrum of creative South Africans. These experiences are reflected in the diversity of his offerings as a journalist, playwright, director and poet.

Wentworth started out writing children’s theatre in Taung in the North West in 1996 and two years later his play Inside the Rainbow was shortlisted for the British Council International New Playwright’s Competition. He has since written and directed numerous dramas and musicals. He has collaborated with household names such as Itumeleng Motsikoe, Peter Mashigo, Mbali Ntuli and Manaka Ranaka but most of his work over the last decade has been produced outside Cape Town, so, atypically, he is somewhat of an enigma to his home audiences.

Career highlights include the musical Torong – A Place to Dream which he wrote, composed and directed as well as his one-man play Waiting which opened at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in 2008 and featured live musical accompaniment by multi-instrumentalist Hilton Schilder. The following year Wentworth returned to Cape Town to direct and co-produce with brother Gary Wentworth the multi-disciplinary performance Live rAge, which was an 80^th birthday tribute to the poet and writer James Matthews, who has been a source of inspiration and encouragement over the years. (One of South Africa’s famous self-publishers whose debut collection Cry Rage was the first book of poetry to be banned by the Nationalist government.)

In 2010, the fifteenth commemoration of the murder by hanging of Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, Wentworth wrote and co-directed the play Progres’ that drew attention to the ecological devastation of the Niger Delta and the struggle for self-determination of the Ogoni people. He is known for such activism as well as his writing workshops with juveniles and youth at risk, encouraging them to develop alternate ways of self-expression.

While Self-Publishing now internationally accounts for most new work available in traditional and social media, this is still a very brave exercise, especially in South Africa.

Moreover the act of publishing one’s own verses is even more daunting at these rather complex and menacing times. A Love Letter for the Epoch however consists of poems that have been written over the last two decades and should be read as a creative take on the “birth” era of South Africa’s democracy. The Foreword to A Love Letter for the Epoch is written by fellow writer and poet Keith Adams who was first introduced by mutual friend and music director Abdel Naroth in 1995.  

Copies of A Love Letter for the Epoch will be available at R100. Further orders can be made directly from Michael Wentworth.

For more info email mikeywentworth@hotmail.com or call 0765157700

The Windhoek reading - at Book Den

The surrogate family farewell...

The Viewing Party

die Vuur, die Wind & die Water - Part 1

die Vuur, die Wind & die Water - part 2

Launch details to follow...

Cover art by Donovan Ward

From A Tale of Extra Ordinary Madness

(By Mana Neyestani)

Then the singing starts; wordless, sweet harmonies as if in the presence of an impromptu, choral ensemble drowning out all other sounds and thoughts with its beatific song of ethereal delight; but with a barely discernable undertone of culpable discord.

I am swept away on the turbulent night breeze, away from my misery; away from the misery of others, the misery of the city veiled by bright neon signs flashing its deceptive welcome to those who can afford its vituperative charms. The decaying buildings which once housed the depraved and the masters, painted in fashionable, muted colours, with sand blasted glass and aged wood and shining chrome façades: home to the obliviously hip and happening.

The once impervious mountain mother, the majestic Hoerikwaggo, brought to its knees under the interrogator’s harsh, relentlessly brilliant white light despoiling the beautiful face of the city.

The electrified grid of streetlights stretches away across the flats to darker corners where a more blatant misery roams the alleys. Undisguised and often unacknowledged within the bustling, thumping conurbation where the blind reign supreme.

The driving bass beats are replaced by gunshots and screams and cries; the raging, manic silences that can no longer be penetrated or dispelled; the unvarying misery of the hopeless and the perpetually downtrodden.

 The sound of babies wailing and children sobbing, hungry mouths feeding on mucous and craving for a more substantial repast. 

The Conglomerate Logo

2nd Edition

To those who didn't get a copy the first time 'round, the 2nd print of A Love Letter for the Epoch will be available soon! Hope to see you at one of the future readings...

Simplicity - a thought inspired by Voltairine de Cleyre.

One day I will die.

Hopefully

as I have strived to live:

a free spirit.

An anarchist,

owing no allegiance

to rulers

in heaven

or on earth.