Thirty years is long enough for a festival to become something closer to a tradition, and Poetry Africa marks that milestone this October with a name that fits the occasion. Koleka Putuma, the Cape Town-based poet, playwright, and multidisciplinary artist, has been named the 2026 Featured Poet, an honour the festival reserves each year for a South African voice whose work carries the weight of the country’s constitutional values into public performance. Running October 5 to 10 at the Durban Playhouse Theatre, this year’s edition is built around the theme “Every Word a Street, Every Voice a City.”

Putuma’s body of work has always resisted staying in one lane. Across three poetry collections, a children’s book, and several plays, she has treated the body and voice as instruments for interrogating religion, memory, and cultural inheritance, often refusing the comfort of resolution. Her children’s book, Everybody Has a Fear, published in the UK in 2025, has already found its way into Korean, Spanish, and German translation, while her 2024 young adult collection, We Have Everything We Need To Start Again, extended her reach to a newer generation of readers. Beyond the page, she runs Manyano Media, a creative company built specifically to produce and platform work by Black queer and non-binary artists, a mission that mirrors the kind of space-making Poetry Africa has spent three decades trying to build on stage.

The festival’s director, Ismail Mahomed, framed the choice around the idea that Putuma’s writing treats truth-telling as an act of freedom, a principle he positioned as central to Poetry Africa’s own founding logic. It is a fitting anchor for a year that is otherwise turning outward. The festival’s marquee event, the 5th World Slam Poetry Championships, will bring 40 slam poets from 40 countries into direct competition across three formats: the Poetry Africa National Slam Jam, the World Poetry Slam Championship, and the Chalkboard Slam, reserved for high school competitors. Curator Siphindile Hlongwa described poetry as one of the few languages the world already speaks in common.

Ahead of the competition proper, Poetry Africa will hold a live-streamed draw on September 8 to determine the quarter-final matchups, broadcast via the festival’s Facebook page. Full programming details, the complete poet lineup, and the recipient of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award are expected in the coming weeks, with tickets going on sale through Webtickets starting September 7.