Local poet and the man behind Wordfest, Prof Chris Mann, will add an unusual flavour to the AGM of the Friends of the Library on Thursday.
Local poet and the man behind Wordfest, Prof Chris Mann, will add an unusual flavour to the AGM of the Friends of the Library on Thursday.
Mann will be performing a selection of his upbeat song-poems on acoustic guitar, drawing primarily on Lifelines, a publication that brought together the poems of Mann, artwork by Julia Skeen and scientific notes by Prof Adrian Craig of the Zoology Department at Rhodes University.
Lifelines presents 40 encounters with animals ranging from aardvark to sea-horses, bees and zebras and the Lifelines Show has been performed numerous times in South Africa, the UK and the USA.
The show at Oxford University raised some R14 000 for the local Masikhulisane Trust, which among other things provides bursaries for underprivileged preschool children and lifeskills camps for disadvantaged youth. The performance on Thursday will be about 15 to 20 minutes long and is guaranteed to get feet tapping with its rhythms inspired by folk and Zulu rural music traditions.
Mann agreed to perform at the AGM because of a long-standing relationship with the organisation but also because he hopes that his performance will inspire other artists to support the outreach work of the Friends of the Library, who are doing a great job of supporting the four libraries in Grahamstown with donations of books, magazines, newspapers and audio books for children.
Mann will also perform his current selection of song-poems at the Richmond Book Fair in the Karoo this weekend, and is planning a show for next year’s National Arts Festival. The Friends of the Library AGM will take place at the Hill Street Library Hall on Thursday at 5.30pm.
A Breath of Awe
In Grahamstown’s Public Library
I read that we are towers of cells,
billions and billions of sedulous cells,
each one more complex than a town.
I turned the page, once more amazed
at life’s deep daring and finesse.
The library clock ticked on, unfazed.
I learned that vast encyclopaedias
were racked inside a chromosome
and microbes moleculed the past.
In some a filament whirred round,
I read with disbelief, then shock,
more than a hundred thousand times
with each slow ticking of that clock.
Beside a book, a phone-screen lit.
Home time, it said. I stood intent
to live each day with greater awe,
yet walking out that reading room
I saw grey rain gust in the door
and anxious faces hurrying past
and huddled beggars, as before.
(c) Chris Mann 2009
