2009/11/21
MXOLISI Nyezwa, of New Brighton in Port Elizabeth, won the 2009 Thomas Pringle Award for Poetry.
The announcement was made by Pringle Award chief adjudicator Dr Amitabh Mitra, of the East London Hospital Complex, at the Book SA Ban’quet last Saturday.
Nyezwa, author of New Country, was awarded R2 000.
He is also the editor of Kotaz, a multilingual literary magazine based in the Eastern Cape.
Of the magazine, arts critic Darryl Accone said: “Kotaz does more than liberate the arts.
“It (the magazine) frees space for public discourse, space that no longer exists in newspapers, as well as freeing hearts and minds to engage with what it means to be living, feeling and thinking in post-apartheid South Africa.”
Nyezwa works in language and writing projects in the rural and township communities of the Eastern Cape to help build a reading and writing culture. — DDC
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