Chris Mann Chris Mann

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Chris Mann Chris Mann"

Rhoda Barrett
5 years ago
Views:

(1948-) was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and spent the first fifteen years of his working life in rural development and poverty alleviation, primarily as Administrative Director of the Valley

1 (1948-) was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and spent the first fifteen years of his working life in rural development and poverty alleviation, primarily as Administrative Director of the Valley Trust (1980 to 1992) outside Durban. He was responsible for innovative projects in low-cost water-supply and sanitation, small-scale agriculture and labour-intensive public works. For example, the public works programme provided seasonal part-time employment for eight years for over a thousand people who constructed pipe-lines, secondary roads, small dams and sports-fields. This project helped initiate public works activities in the civil engineering department at the local university. Service delivery was accompanied by the facilitation of new democratic institutions during a fraught and at times violent period of the struggle in the valley. These ranged from protected spring, school and community- garden committees to the first democratic development and services board in the area. His other experience includes being a teacher of English in a rural black school, a junior lecturer in the Department of English at Rhodes University, founder and chair of the Teacher Development Foundation ( ), a trustee of the Donaldson Trust, a member for five years of the Rhodes Scholarship selection committee in KwaZulu-Natal, co-founder and song-writer of Zabalaza, a cross-culture band performing in English and Zulu (winner of the SATV Follow-that-Star new band competition), a member of the National Economic Forum s Task Team on job creation, a parish councillor, Deputy CEO of the Grahamstown Foundation, secretary of Spiritfest and co-founder of the Masikhulisane Trust and the Anglican Guild of Men (Grahamstown Cathedral Parish). Sport he played club cricket and rugby on and off till thirty having played first team pretty much throughout his time at school, for example fly-half for Bishops 1st XV. His formal education includes an MA from the School of Oriental and African Languages (London) in African Oral Literature, Zulu 1 and 2 through UNISA, an MA from Oxford in English Language and Literature, a BA from Wits University majoring in English and Philosophy and a course in financial management at Wits Business School. His languages in declining order of competence are English, Zulu, Afrikaans, Italian and Xhosa. 1 / 8

2 Now based at the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, he is the founder and convenor of Wordfest, a national multi-lingual festival of South African languages and literatures with a developmental emphasis. (See wordfest.co.za.) He convened an international conference on the economic benefits of the arts which inter alia prompted the cultural economics activities of the Rhodes University Economics Department. Other innovative ideas that have been implemented include WordBeacons, SciFest, sculpture poems and multi-media productions of poetry that use modern information technology to create a genre tentatively called graphic poetry. His poems have appeared in books, newspapers, magazines, journals, textbooks and in various anthologies in South Africa and abroad. He gets on the road once or twice a year and performs his work at the national arts festival, at schools, universities and conferences around the country from year to year as part of a life-long passion to promote poetry in the public domain. Lifelines, for example, has been performed fifty times to date. The Comrades Marathon, an extended poem in alliterated verse celebrating the race and its founder and based on the Olympian odes of Pindar (about 500 BCE), was published in the souvenir booklet of the 2004 race. Money a long satirical poem in rhyming tetrameter couplets about the history and nature of money was first published in Business Day and The Roman Centurion s Good Friday, an extended meditation on the crucifixion drawing on Nguni and Celtic prosody, has been performed in churches in Grahamstown, Durban, Johannesburg, Oxford and Dublin. He recited his oral poem Till Love is Lord of the Land at the rally in Kings Park Stadium that welcomed Nelson Mandela to Durban after his release from prison. is a South African of English, Dutch and Irish descent (McMahon). His writing is informed by the daily use of different South African languages and his varied experience of people and life in that country. His nickname Zithulele (Xhosa/Zulu) means a taciturn person. He and the artist Julia Skeen were married in They have two children and live in Grahamstown. Selected Work 2 / 8

3 Granadilla. From Horn of Plenty. (including Julia Skeen's illustration) I can remember a Christmas in the Drakensberg whose grey seraphic crags Lifted the riddle of serenity and placed it high above the sprawl of human habitation. I was a student of Zulu literature equipped with sleeping-bag and tape-recorder traipsing around the foothills in search of a clan's epic poem. The grey-headed imbongi I'd come to record had lost a hand on the Reef was stretched on a sleeping-mat unwilling to perform but asked about work he stood and shaking the stump of his arm cursed the mine in a rage. That was I suppose an epic poem of a sort the textbooks had yet to enshrine. As for the granadillas a vine of them flourished along his fence the pods leathery and wrinkled the skins flaking. The juice in those he offered me was nearly dry but the seeds were there alright hard bitter black and live. Bibliography Main publications First Poems. Cape Town: Bateleur Press. 3 / 8

4 1979. A New Book of South African Verse. With: Butler, Guy (eds). Cape Town: OUP New Shades. Cape Town: David Philip Kites. Cape Town: David Philip Mann Alive! Cape Town: David Philip South Africans. Maritzburg: University of Natal Press The Horn of Plenty. With: Julia Skeen. Grahamstown: ISEA, Rhodes The Roman Centurion s Good Friday. Grahamstown: Grahamstown Cathedral Heartlands. Maritzburg: University of Natal Press In Praise of the Shades. Grahamstown: Grahamstown Cathedral Walking on Gravity. Grahamstown: Grahamstown Cathedral Thuthula. Johannesburg: Ravan-Macmillan. 4 / 8

5 2005. Beautiful Lofty Things. Grahamstown: Grahamstown Cathedral Walking on Gravity. In: Dante in South Africa. Cullinan, Patrick and Watson, Stephen (eds). Cape Town: Centre for Creative Writing, University of Cape Town Lifelines. With: Skeen, Julia and Craig, Adrian. Maritzburg: University of KZN Press Home from Home. Cape Town: Echoing Green Press Small Town Big Voice. Ed. Renard, Andrew. Port Elizabeth: SACEE Rudiments of Grace. Grahamstown: Cathedral of St Michael and St George. Productions in verse The Sand Labyrinth National Student Drama Festival. Mahoon s Testimony. Broadcast on SAfm in 1998, rebroadcast / 8

6 Frail Care. Broadcast on SAfm in 1997 and re-broadcast in 1999 and The Crux of Being National Arts Festival Fringe. In Praise of the Shades National Arts Festival Fringe. Thuthula National Arts Festival Main Programme. Walking on Gravity National Arts Festival Fringe. Beautiful Lofty Things National Arts Festival Fringe Lifelines National Arts Festival Fringe production. LifeSongs National Arts Festival Fringe installation. With: Skeen, Julia. Epiphanies National Arts Festival Fringe installation. LifeSongs National English Literary Museum installation. 6 / 8

7 The Ballad of Dirk de Bruin, National Arts Festival Fringe. General Guest writer, Poetry Africa, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, Guest writer, Centre for the Arts, National University of Singapore, Guest writer, International Festival of Literature, Montecantini, Italy, Royal Society and Academy of Sciences of South Africa lecture, Rhodes, Main Awards Olive Schreiner Prize for South African Poetry in English. South African Performing Arts Councils Playwright of the Year. Newdigate Prize for Poetry while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. 7 / 8

8 Hon. D. Litt. (University of Durban-Westville, now UKZN). Eastern Cape Premier s Award for Literature. Ad Hominem Professor of Poetry, Rhodes University English Academy of South Africa Thomas Pringle Award Author Map (Port Elizabeth) {mosmap width='500' height='400' lat=' ' lon=' ' zoom='10' zoomtype='small' zoomnew ='0' maptype='normal' showmaptype='1' text='' tooltip='port Elizabeth' overview='0' marker='1' align='center'} 8 / 8

FAQ: The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Jack Holmes (410) 516-6928, jmh@press.jhu.edu August 11, 2014 FAQ: The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PUBLISHING THIS MATERIAL AND WHY HAVE ELIOT