Quite a few of Amazwi’s staff signed up to explore their own creative voices in 2024. Nozipho Madinda (Education Officer), Patricia Peterson (Visitor Officer), Ayanda Simangweni (Gallery Attendant) and Anela Lupuwana (Post-graduate Intern) completed the 15-week community creative writing course run by the Institute for the Study of the Englishes of Africa (ISEA) at Rhodes University in 2024.
However, they were not the only Amazwi people involved: stalwart of the course since the early 2000s Crystal Warren (Head of Curatorial Division) as well as Marike Beyers (Senior Curator) and Sithembele Xhegwana (Curator) put their weight behind it as facilitators, as did Jeannie Wallace McKeown (poet and freelance editor). It was Sithembele’s first engagement with the course and he particularly supported the isiXhosa writers.
Participants are encouraged to write in their mother tongue and support each other in learning to write, giving feedback each other and editing their work. Amazwi staff brought the ring of multilingual creativity to the classes, with poems and stories written in English, isiXhosa and bits of Afrikaans. Ayanda found great joy in writing in isiXhosa.
At the end of the course, participants select editors among themselves to put together an anthology titled Aerial. This is published each year by the ISEA to celebrate the creativity of these ‘night writers’ – so-called because the classes are held in the evenings and most of the writers (like writers everywhere) have to fit in their scribbling and shaping of stories into the extra hours after work or studies.
The editors for Aerial 2024 were Kim Barker as coordinator, who worked mostly with the English texts and Amazwi’s intern, Anela, who put her attention to the isiXhosa texts. All the Amazwi staff contributed some writing to Aerial 2004. Contributors not yet mentioned were: Lyn Brown, Lorna Cole, Jane Grindley, Mariss Stevens (retired Amazwi archivist), Nobukhosi Tata, Caroline van der Mescht, Ngcali Angelica Xhegwana and Aradan Yazbek.
Aerial 2024 was launched at Amazwi South Africa Museum of Literature on the evening of 10 December 2024. Friends, family, Makhanda-literature-lovers and wanna-do-the-course-next-year people attended, listened attentively to the new writers reading and celebrated with us.
Amazwi’s Education and Public Programmes Division particularly encouraged staff to do this short course in creative writing in the hope that it would serve as a source of inspiration, put them in touch with how writers might go about expressing their thoughts, ideas and experiences and expose them to various ways of writing, to different genres and authors. In short, to delve into creative writing and grow their interest in reading and writing.
We hope that the reading and writing of 2024 continues this hopeful reach. Below is a list of the titles of Amazwi staff’s contributions to Aerial 2024.
Anela Lupuwana:
Nozipho Madinda:
Patricia Peterson:
Ayanda Simangweni:
Marike Beyers:
Crystal Warren:
Sithembele Xhegwana:
