Poet Chris Mann visits UP

Chris Mann visits UP

 On the 11^th and 12^th of April this year, the English Department was delighted to welcome contemporary South African troubadour Chris Mann. Mann, who is Professor of Poetry at Rhodes University is a well-known local poet who has published a number of collections of poetry and is currently on our second year syllabus. He convenes Wordfest every year and tirelessly promotes poetry in schools and communities around the country. He was accompanied on this visit by his wife, the artist Julia Skeen.

Mann performed a selection of his poems and song poems to a very appreciative student audience and then followed this with a lecture to the second years in which he discussed the writing process and explored the relationship between form and content in a number of the poems heard on the previous day.

Students attending the classes spoke enthusiastically of how they now had a far greater appreciation of poetry in general and many stayed on after the class to discuss writing and poetry with him. The general consensus after the visit was that Chris Mann ‘rocks’!