Festival Poets Visit Centre for African Literature Studies

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The 17^th edition of the popular Poetry Africa International Poetry Festival kicked off its week-long programme with a visit to the Centre for African Literature Studies (CALS) Library at the UKZN Pietermaritzburg campus.  

Hosted by the Centre for Creative Arts (CCA), the Festival brings to KwaZulu-Natal some of the world’s finest poets and musicians. This year they came from countries such as India, Benin, Nigeria, Ireland, Italy, Canada and the United States of America. With cultural exchange a key characteristic of the week-long celebration, this year’s participating poets visited the Centre, read some of their work, and made donations of their poetry to the CALS library.  

CALS was launched in September 2004 as the home of the Bernth Lindfors Collection after the renowned US Scholar of African literature donated his books to the library. The collection boasts some 13 000 books, journals and rare tape and video material and is especially notable for its holdings of material published in Africa, such as a full collection of Onitsha market literature from Nigeria. Also in the collection is a large body of newspaper clippings relating to African authors and wide-ranging bibliographical resources for criticism about African literature. 

CALS is committed to growing its holdings and extending its focus beyond African literature written in English and is a leading resource for the study of Lusophone, Francophone and other African language literatures. The vision of the Centre is to develop African Studies as an inter-disciplinary programme and thus set UKZN on the path to becoming the “Premier University of African Scholarship” and the “University of First Choice” in African Studies.  

-           Melissa Mungroo