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The year is marked with many special days, weeks, and months dedicated and devoted to raising awareness about important issues.
This monthly post will note special dates and themes, and draw your attention to possibly interesting cross-disciplinary topical references intended to inform and to inspire ideas for research.
Selected Noteworthy Days in February 2015:
SA start-up Parcelninja raises R20m
MultiChoice fined for ‘negligence’
Drones help wage war on rhino poachers
Post Office expects R1,3bn loss
Koeberg puts power grid under pressure
FillApp tells you when to fill up
Namibia begins analogue TV switch-off
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If you are looking for 2014's forthcoming conferences, the following websites are helpful:
Sole, K (2008) Licking the Stage Clean or Hauling Down the Sky?: The Profile of the Poet and the Politics of Poetry in Contemporary South Africa. Mediations 24:1 (Fall 2008) 132-165.
Abstract:
Kelwyn Sole describes some of the issues and trends in contemporary English-language poetry in South Africa. Focusing on the current fashionability of poetry and the aura that surrounds the figure of the poet in the media and public sphere, he summarizes some of the uses being made of poetry at the moment. On the one hand, it is being utilized as a tool of nation-building and an advertising medium for big business. On the other (and usually in sharp distinction to this) it is being mobilized by poets as a means of social critique and an expression of anger vis-à-vis current structures of power. Questions are asked of the susceptibility of lyric poetry in particular to usage by political and business elites as a means to assist the construction, in its audiences, of a consumerist sense of self; as well as to provide models of citizenship in tune with the discursive priorities of the South African state in its current, capitalist form.
http://www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/licking-the-stage-or-hauling-down-the-sky
http://www.mediationsjournal.org/files/Mediations24_1_07.pdf