Berry Heart to attend Storymoja
Thato Kala | Friday July 18, 2014 11:38
Storymoja and UK-based Hay Festival are putting together this year’s event, which is expected to attract several international writers, artists and thinkers. They will come together to engage in discussions and entertainment.
The Botswana High Commission in Nairobi said it identified the event as an opportunity for Berry Heart to refine her craft.
The gifted poetess equates the upcoming event to a continental soccer showpiece where footballers get to meet their role models and interact on a continental platform. “I am so excited, I cannot wait. I like meeting international artists. We see footballers doing that at tournaments. We will also get to exchange words, books, make friends and new contacts,” she said of the event that runs from September 17 to 24, 2014.
The festival brings together storytellers who use different ways to communicate through books, poems, and visual art.
The four-day festival has activities such as debates, concerts, film screenings, lectures and performances. Storymoja is a celebration of African stories and contemporary culture through storytelling, books, live discussion forums, workshops, debates, live performances, competition and music.
Also the festival presents Heart with the opportunity to rub shoulders with Dr Wole Soyinka, this year’s guest of honour.
Heart says she has been reading Wole Soyinka’s works from her school days and considers it a privilege to be on the same platform with him.
The Nigerian playwright and poet will preside over a wide presence of internationally acclaimed artists, writers, and poets.
Heart said the presence of the man, who was the first African to win a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, is the best thing that could ever happen to artists on the continent.
“Excitement is an understatement. I am going to take pictures and get as much wisdom as I can. I have been reading his books from the time I was at school. We studied some of his books there,” she added. Exactly a month after Storymoja, she will travel to India for the Kritya Poetry Festival. Heart said the two engagements are a sure sign her brand is recognised internationally.
“People who do not believe in the Berry Heart brand can see it is growing internationally. It is getting recognised outside the country,” she said.
Director of Kritya Poetry Festival, a chief editor and award-winning poet of four books, Dr Rati Saxena, has selected Berry Heart to participate in this year’s festival to be held at Trivandrum, Kerala.
An excerpt from the invite reads: “You are an eminent poet of modern times, and our selection committee has recommended your name for our upcoming poetry festival. We will be much obliged if you could make it convenient to attend our festival”.
Kritya is a trust, formally registered in January 2007 in Kerala, India with a view to advance and enrich art, literature and culture.
Along with other literary activities, Kritya organises an international poetry festival every year in different parts of India.
The ninth Kritya has been pencilled in for Trivandrum, Kerala from November 16 to 18, 2014.
This edition of Kritya festival aims to explore the enlightening and uniting aspect of poetry and its sister arts.
At the request of the festival committee, Heart said she sent 10 poems including the well-known Child Of My Mother and Mmammoledi.
“The 10 poems will be translated to Hindi and Malayam,” she said.
In addition, the poems will be included in the festival’s Poetry Anthology to be published during the week of the festival.
Furthermore, Heart and Saxena will work in a studio recording collaboration. The duo were among the 159 international poets who wrote a poetry anthology that called for peace in Hazara, Afghanistan entitled A Poetry Anthology For The Hazara, which was published in January this year.
The two have worked together since 2010 in several of her theatre productions including Rebirth Of An Ostrich where Heart was the lead actress.
The two will work together to deliver a multimedia, cultural poetry performance and leave Botswana for India on November 14.