01/12/2025
Zubayr Charles , participant of the Kommadagga Workshop in 2020, will be taking part in ๐ฎ ๐ฝ๐ผ๐ฒ๐๐ฟ๐ ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ด hosted by The Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Collective.
๐๐ฎ๐๐ฒ: 3 December 2025 (Wednesday)
๐ง๐ถ๐บ๐ฒ: 19:30
๐ฉ๐ฒ๐ป๐๐ฒ: The Commons surfer's Corner, Beach Rd, Muizenberg (Cape Town)
Zubayr Charles' poetry collection, ๐ฉ๐๐ ๐จ๐๐ ๐๐ค๐ฎโ๐จ ๐จ๐ฉ๐๐ง๐ฉ๐๐ง ๐ฅ๐๐๐ ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐ค๐ฉ๐๐๐ง ๐ฅ๐ค๐๐ข๐จ, will be published next year in March!
Read more about Zubayr Charles and his work on Paulet House Stories: https://paulethousestories.jgf.org.za/
Kenah Mckenzie and Zubayr Charles will be reading to us at The Commons this week!
Jenah Mckenzie (she/her) is a passionate, curious, q***r, intimate writer and linguist born in Durban and residing in Cape Town. Her storytelling began before she could write, babbling out princess tales for her mother to write down for her, accompanied by little Jenahโs drawings. Later, she evolved to handwriting โ stories about the birds in her grandmotherโs garden and re-crafting Jack and the Beanstalk into a tale about feminist power (as much as a nine-year-old knows how to, anyway). As an adult, her dominant writing forms are poetry, personal essay, and lyrical essay. Her poetry page, The Jem Journals, is dedicated to being forever curious about the small moments of in-between โ inspired by the likes of Mary Oliver, Toni Morrison, and local legend Antjie Krog โ and she shares her essays on her Substack of the same name. She is an emerging poet, with her first chapbook on the way.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejemjournals/
Substack: https://thejemjournals.substack.com/
Zubayr Charles is a 30 year old multi-disciplinary writer and UCT Masters in Creative Writing cm laude graduate from Cape Town, South Africa. As an emerging playwright and director, his worksโMercy; Please, donโt call me moffie; The Battered Housewivesโ Club; and this braโs a psychoโhave been showcased at various theatres and festivals in Cape Town. His essays are published on LitNet and Cape Creative Collective. He has completed his first novel Haram and he has additionally finished a poetry collection titled the sad boyโs starter pack and other poems โ both dealing with the theme of q***r identity which he hopes to get published in 2026.
As always, the reading by the featured poet will be followed by an open mic session for poets from the audience. Poets are welcome to read from their own work as well as from the work of a favourite poet.
