Date: 17 February 2011
Intwasa Festival in partnership with Poetry Bulawayo, Multimedia Box and Amabooks is introducing for the first time an innovative photo-poetry exhibition where poetry will be juxtaposed with photo imagery.
The exhibition opens at the National Art Gallery in Bulawayo on February 17 and will run for a month.
It will run under the theme, "Writing with Light."
The theme calls for innovative work, which demonstrates new ideas, writing styles, approaches, techniques and extends the existence of the diverse poetry forms in Zimbabwe.
Mgcini Nyoni, the organiser expressed satisfaction with the preparations.
"The preparations are going on well and we are ready to launch on the February 17 at the National Art Gallery.
"We have already started receiving some of the poems and artists are responding well," Nyoni said.
Commenting on the theme he said: "For things to be seen, light must fall upon them.
"A moment is frozen by a photograph and then a poet unfreezes the moment by interpreting the photograph into a poem."
Poets will be asked to come up with poetic interpretations of photographic images of their choice from 20 photographs provided by the organisers.
The photo-poetry exhibition aims to promote the art of poetry and photography in a shared space of aesthetics.
In this space, poetry is visually enhanced with still images of life's moments.
"We hope this unique blend of poetry-photo exhibition will become a permanent feature of Intwasa Festival thereby helping to preserve these art forms," Nyoni said.
He added that the exhibition will recognise the participants' artistic efforts by virtue of merit through issuing of certificates for the participating artists and awards for the three outstanding poets.
Selected poems will be published in an anthology.