Chris Mann

Chris Mann (1948-2021) was a South African poet, playwright and academic.

Also listed as Chris Zithulele Mann in some sources.

Biography

Born in Port Elizabeth and went to school in Cape Town. Has been working as an academic since 1977.

Training

Formal education includes a BA from the University of the Witwatersrand majoring in English and Philosophy, an MA from the School of Oriental and African Languages (London) in African Oral Literature and an MA from Oxford University in English Language and Literature - went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

Career

From 1977 to 1980 held a post in the English Department at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. From 1980 to 1995 worked with an NGO, The Valley Trust. Returned to Rhodes University in 1995, appointed as a professor of poetry. Now based at the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University, he is the founder and convenor of Wordfest, a national multilingual festival of South African languages and literatures with a developmental emphasis.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

He wrote The Sand Labyrinth.

The play Thuthula - Heart of the Labyrinth (1980*). (Other plays include **)

Has published collections of poetry, including New Shades (1982), Kites, and Other Poems (1990), Mann Alive!: Poems (1992), South Africans: a set of portrait-poems (1996), The horn of plenty: a series of painting-poems (1997), Heartlands (2002) and Home from Home: New and Selected Poems (2010).