Litnet

The 2025 AVBOB Poetry Competition officially opens for entries on 1 August 2024. This prestigious contest invites poets from all corners of South Africa to submit their original works in any of the South Africa’s 11 official written languages. With generous cash prizes awaiting the winning entries, this is a golden opportunity for talented wordsmiths to shine.

Open to unpublished playwrights who are over the age of 18 and living anywhere in South Africa, the competition calls for scripts, partial scripts or script synopses with a sample of writing in any of South Africa’s official languages.

Busisiwe Mavuso, CEO at Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA), sketches a very dark picture of the ANC’s monumental failures at providing the basics for a conducive economic environment. However, the GNU represents "the last chance".

"Thank you for mentioning persons with disabilities as part of the future of an inclusive and transformational South African society. Allow me to suggest a few ways in which this laudable aspiration can become a meaningful, specific action plan."

"No, he is not a rock star lawyer, as are some of those mentioned at the top of this note, but he is instead a humbler man who limited his financial ambitions to work rather with the needy and the under-resourced. He did great work here, at no great profit. The best of South Africa is built on such people making such sacrifices."

"The arts give us the space and capacity to express ourselves freely on any topic and any concern, to meet those who are most unlike us, and to understand their points of view" ... "We create conversations that confront and heal. We speak for those who don’t have a voice and take those who need to escape, to far-away places. Audiences leave changed."

This year’s festival promises to be more than just a celebration of literature; it will serve as a vital platform for meaningful discussions. The lineup includes a wide array of talented writers, reflecting the rich tapestry of African literature.

"The action scenes and literary descriptions of the ocean with all its vicissitudes are vivid – from the perspectives of both a submariner and a sailor on a surface vessel. The text is replete with historical references and technical details of life on board, and is aided by a glossary of naval terms at the beginning of the book."

As South Africans prepare to celebrate Mandela Day on 18 July, the AVBOB Poetry Project is acknowledging Nkateka Masinga, a Mandela Washington Fellow and an award-winning writer, poet and scholar whose original voice pays tribute to the leaders and storytellers who came before her.

"Meintjes devotedly nurses his grape and malt, the pool table and his favourite bars, while around him the grand spectacle of life unfolds, and the stoicism of Long Street is revealed on a nightly basis."

"With Lammy’s help, Sir Keir could wean Pretoria off its corrosive dependency relationship with Vladimir Putin. The Labour Party’s win could have very positive implications for the new Government of National Unity in South Africa."

Artscape will also be inviting participants to play their part towards ending GBV by coming to Artscape at any time during the month of August to sign their #Step-Up for Change Pledge.

"This, then, is to invite you to get to know us – beyond the sweetheart entities that your predecessors have created and imposed on us as our representatives, beyond the gatkruipers dependent on state patronage for their lifestyles – to listen and to hear us before making big pronouncements about us or for us."

"This presents you with an important entry point at the outset of your new assignment, demystifying the notion that only new infrastructure can solve the problems of limited access."

"The bulk of the festival was held in Mark Street, a picturesque street with old nagmaalhuisies that have been bought up and restored. At the end of the street sits the Victoria Hotel, a stately venue with warm interiors to welcome travellers and conference-goers."

This month, the AVBOB Poetry Project asked the award-winning South African poet Caitlin Stobie to reflect on what aspiring poets can do to channel more surprising, richly imagined words. Read the three creative writing tips Caitlin shared and notice how your experience of writing is transformed when you apply them to your own practice.

"Colonel Jan Breytenbach, who has died peacefully in bed in his nineties, was arguably South Africa’s finest soldier in the latter half of the 20th century."

"Gaza has become the centre of the universe, the same way Soweto was the centre of the universe." A book discussion and video interview with Haidar Eid, author and professor in postcolonial studies and postmodern literature at al-Aqsa University, Gaza City.

Commando is more than a historical document; it is a literary masterpiece that transcends time. With prose that captures both the brutality and the beauty of war, Reitz weaves a narrative that resonates with authenticity and passion. As relevant today as when it was first penned, Commando has become a South African classic and stands as a testament to the indomitable human spirit in the face of adversity.

Sanjana Thakur: "Writing stories is a way for me to accept that Mumbai is a city I will long for even when I am in it; it is a way to remake ‘place’ in my mind. I feel that the Commonwealth Short Story Prize offers that chance up to all of us: to be a writer who is from ‘somewhere’, to write from inside a legacy of colonialism and migration. I am so incredibly grateful to the prize for recognising that stories are not written in a vacuum."