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.

Married to Julia Skeen. She illustrated some of his published works.

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. During this period, he began to turn to music to showcase his poetry and reach a wider audience, co-founding a band Zabalaza with Zulu musicians which performed to mixed audiences around the country and on national television. One of the biggest gigs of his life was in 1990 when he performed his poem Till Love is Lord of the Land in front of a crowd of over 100,000 at a rally in Durban to welcome Mandela after his release from prison.

Mann 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.

He published a number of 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).

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

He wrote the plays The Sand Labyrinth (1980) and Thuthula - Heart of the Labyrinth (2003 - possibly a revised version of the 1980 play).

Awards, etc

While at Oxford University, he was awarded the Newdigate Prize for Poetry.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Mann_%28poet%29

http://www.chrismann.co.za/

https://klcpublishing.substack.com/p/chris-mann-1948-2021

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