A Poetics of Transformation

A Poetics For Transformation is a short documentary film made from the festival video archives of Poetry Africa over the years, combined with animated illustrations, a call-and-response soundscape and photography. It seeks to explore poetry’s capacity to conscientize within the broader ecology of social justice. The film seeks to harness how poetry can be linked to our universal cry for more justice: political, social, and economic by looking at how Poetry Africa performances spoke back to the underlying dynamics of global #hashtag movements.  The creative team behind the documentary hope to introduce emerging poets to the positioning of their artistic practice that allows them to become integral to the realisation of social justice. The Centre for Creative Arts hopes that this documentary inspires other creatives to experiment with making content from our rich and underused arts archives. The project was produced from a catalytic research project funded by the National Institute for Humanities & Social Sciences (NIHSS). The credits for the documentary are S’bo Cele (Project Editor), Daniel Sheldon (Illustrator), Nhlanhla Mngadi (Sound Production) and Karen Ijumba (Researcher & Producer).