Warsan Shire - Girl on Fire

The London-based Kenya-born Somalia-raised poet Warsan Shire first wowed the world when excerpts of her work were used on Beyoncé’s iconic Lemonade. Her poetry is like the refreshing yellow drink but laced with Vodka - bittersweet and packing a punch. It is a poignant reflection on modern womanhood and first generation belonging delivered in her distinctive style- part rallying war cry, part vivid evocation. Mainstream feminism has a need to embrace intersectionality. So, I propose Ms. Shire as a voice of a new generation of women who know that vulnerability and fearlessness are like music and lyrics- they belong together. Her latest contribution, Your Family, Your Body is available on Amazon now.

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Interview With iFix founder and CEO, Alex Fourie

At just 28, Alex Fourie is already the CEO of his own successful company. Named as one of Forbes Magazine’s top 10 Promising Young African Entrepreneurs in 2014, he’s been going from strength to strength ever since he started his company out of his dorm room at Stellenbosch University in 2006. 'Ja, I played and managed bands for 10 years. It was fun and it taught me a lot about branding. Music is so subjective and making a name for yourself in music is so hard that business was nearly easy after that.' His company, iFix, repairs apple products and has 11 shops throughout South Africa, servicing over 10 000 customers a month. Fourie saw a gap in the market when he tried to have his iPod repaired but was told by experts that this wasn’t possible. A few YouTube tutorials later he had fixed the device himself and a business was born. We asked Alex some questions to gain a better insight into his success. You’re only 28 yet you employ a staff of 80, if my sour

Drawings in dialouge

“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears,” Gertrude Stein, writer and patron to Picasso once said. The Tjorts!/Cheers! exhibition explores this idea. In the show lines of text and lines from works of art form a dialogue where the words and art come together to create a more complex, rich vision. Collaboration between poets and artists is not a novel idea. There is even a word for it: “ekphrasis” defined as “the response of one art form to another” and it often involves poetry responding to a medium of art. It goes both ways though – with the artist’s work as a starting point for the poet, and the poetry as a stimulus for the artist. And sometimes it is a complete organic collaboration. Inspired by South African writer Danie Marais’ poem of the same name the exhibition is essentially a creative conversation between the poet and visual artists, Tina Jensen, Marlise Keith and John Murray as well as Marna Hattingh and Liza Grobler who co-curated the sho

Art & about Cape Town

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