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Iikka Saunamäki 
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Suomi-Etelä-Afrikka-seura

05/06/09

Poet Vonani Bila to Finland

One of SA's top poets, Vonani Bila, will be in Finland in the end of May 2009. The fifth in a family of eight children, Vonani Bila was born in 1972 and grew up in poverty-stricken Shirley Village, Limpopo, where he walked 14 kilometres daily to Lemana High School in Elim. He went on to study at Tivumbeni College of Education and hoped to join Umkhonto we Sizwe until the death of his father necessitated a change of plans.

Vonani Bila is especially known for his powerful poetry of social commentary. A poet writing in English and Xitsonga, Bila has performed in Belgium, Sweden, Holland, Ghana and Brazil, and has authored eight storybooks in English, Northern Sotho and Xitsonga for newly literate adult readers. In 2005, he was nominated for the Daimler Chrysler 2005 South Africa Poetry Award.

Bila is the founder of the Timbila Poetry Project, which has published a series of poetry collections and the literary journal Timbila. He has been instrumental in getting the works of marginalised poets into circulation and has been a nurturing inspiration for aspiring poets, holding workshops and actively encouraging new voices.

You can meet Vonani in the World Village Festival in Helsinki
Sat 23.5.2009 16:40-17:00, Mekong-stage, Vonani Bila: Poems 
Sat 23.5.2009 18:20-18:40, Amazon-stage, African Poems: Shailja Patel and Vonani Bila 
Sun 24.5.2009 13:40-14:00, Amazon-stage, Postcolonial Literature in Africa: Shailja Patel, Vonani Bila and Mohammed Umar

On the 16th May Vonani is in Tampere Social forum, 17th May Poetry Marathon' of the Lahti Poetry Week and on 25th May his poems can be heard in Hämeenlinna.