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Threading Tongues: Call and Response with Poetry and Beadwork

Voiced: The Festival for Endangered Languages

,Fountain Room
Nomakhwezi Becker on stage

Explore South African storytelling, beadwork poetics and praise poetry in this participatory workshop with performer and writer Nomakhwezi Becker.

This participatory poetry workshop draws on South African storytelling traditions of Call & Response, introducing kwasukasukela and its answering phrase chosi in Zulu storytelling tradition, where language is collective and embodied. From there, the focus shifts to ukuzimamela - listening to the body as an archive of memory and language. 

Participants are also invited to explore the resonances of home and heritage through personal and everyday objects and imagine what languages they carry, what histories they hold and what they want to keep alive.

We then explore beadwork poetics as a material language and poetic archive in South African tradition, reflecting on how beads and patterns tell stories. 

The workshop culminates in an exercise in praise poetry, examining the collective and personal acts of naming, honouring and imagining.

Tagged with: Talks & events Voiced: The Festival for Endangered Languages Take part

Duration: 2h

Participants are encouraged to bring an object that reminds them of home/family/heritage or have an image of said object to refer to.

Image credit: Salam Zaied

Facilitator

Nomakhwezi Becker is a South African–German performer, writer and facilitator working through poetry, theatre and storytelling. Her work explores memory, language and belonging across diasporic lineages. A Barbican Young Poet (24 & 25) and 2025 Starting Blocks artist, her recent works include Holding Ground and Waiting for Lift Off. She has performed internationally and been published in several anthologies.

Fountain Room

Location
The Fountain Room is located on Level G. 

Address
Barbican Centre
Silk Street, London
EC2Y 8DS

Public transport
​​​​​​​The Barbican is widely accessible by bus, tube, train and by foot or bicycle. Plan your journey and find more route information in ‘Your Visit’ or book your car parking space in advance.