ABSTRACT
Since the early 1990s South Africa has seen an explosion of new performance poets working in genres that range from izibongo (praise poetry) to spoken word and rap. Conjunctly with this phenomenon there has also been a marked growing interest in the formal organizing of space for use in the public performance of poetry. What becomes apparent from attending one of these organized poetry festivals is the preference given to oral and performance poetry, especially amongst the younger urbanized poets. According to Ruth Finnegan, “[n]ewly emergent genres or forms” in Africa draw on “a mix of languages or media” and are “no longer automatically brushed aside as somehow hybrid or un-African, an untoward departure from the pure and authentic genres of the past” (2007: 182). Furthermore, recent studies in orality attest to “an altered vision of oral texts, no longer automatically assigned to some uniform ‘Tradition’ of the past, but also regarded as creatures of the present” (181).
