Caged No More!

On Saturday 21st June, Write4Life, together with On the Pulse, YearBeyond and Chrysalis Academy celebrated the launch of ‘Caged No More’, an anthology of youth poems and short stories, at Artscape in Cape Town. The winter sun came out for what was a joyful celebration of the remarkable achievement of 17 talented young people who can now call themselves published authors!

The launch was the fruition of a creative writing journey that began at Write4Life’s ‘On the Pulse’ creative writing workshop in April. Many of the 17 workshop participants had not written poetry or short stories before and the writers spent the weekend finding their writing voices through experimenting with words and sharing their stories. After the workshop the writers worked together with Write4Life mentors and editors to perfect their poetry and stories and these were compiled into a powerful anthology with striking illustrations.

The Write4Life workshop and anthology were the creative writing component of ‘On the Pulse’ –a collaborative multimedia initiative between Chrysalis Academy and YearBeyond aimed at ‘providing a platform for young people and communities to share their stories, insights, hopes and dreams through various media channels.’

Read this thoughtful and engaging foreword in the anthology, by HOD of Cultural Affairs and Sport for the Western Cape Government, Guy Redman:

“This anthology is a brave and beautiful offering from the young voices of the Western Cape. In these pages they speak truths that are too often silenced. These truths are about identity, trauma, hope, home, loss, love and survival. The arts take from real life and give back to it in many generous ways This anthology is one of them.”

Mr Redman gave a heartfelt address to the participants at the launch thanking them for their bravery in sharing their stories and encouraging them to keep writing. Wayde Groep from YearBeyond and Lucille Meyer from Chrysalis spoke about the remarkable journey the participants had been on through the ‘On the Pulse’ initiative and the skills and confidence they had acquired over the programme. Dorothy Dyer from Write4Life spoke of the importance of writing, of how it can be healing, and a way to take control of your own story. She also described the magic of the weekend workshop!

After the key speakers the writers, who had brought family and friends, came up individually to collect their copy of the anthology and have a paparazzi moment – Cape Town TV were covering the event, and there were many other photographers!

The launch ended with writers getting the opportunity to share their work with family, friends and other guests as they broke into small groups, spoke about what inspired their poems or stories, and read their poems and short stories.

Afterwards there was much joy and congratulations as copies of the anthology were passed around to sign and authors were interviewed by Cape TV. ‘I feel like a celebrity’ was on many lips.

What started out on a cold day in April with seventeen participants, who didn’t know each other ended in a celebration of what felt like a new ‘writing family’.