Home is Where the Mic is

Description

This anthology presents the work of twenty-four young Spoken Word poets from South Africa with a sprinkling of guests from the United States, Britain and Australia. The experience of black youth in societies polarized by racism, inequality and gender violence whilst struggling to come to terms with love, sex and all the other basic needs of young people makes for fascinating reading. The inventive graphic layout is a fine addition to a stand out volume. The anthology was conceived as a collaboration with ‘Word n Sound’, a popular Johannesburg Spoken Word platform. The intention was to give hitherto only ‘stage’ poets an opportunity to test their work on the ‘page’ and confound the Eurocentric critics of the new wave of performance poetry who decry its energy and breaking down of artificial definitions of poetry. It is therefore a prime example of how to decolonise South African literature.