Rivers State would be agog in early November this year, when the three day Port Harcourt Poetry Festival would hold in the Garden City.
A statement signed by the founder, More Life Poetry and director, Port Harcourt Poetry Festival, Ken-Adele Marvellous Oruchi and made available to LEADERSHIP Friday in Abuja yesterday, said the festival, which would be from the 3rd to the 5th, would feature who is who in spoken word poetry in Nigeria, including Kudo Eresia-Eke, Sage Hassan , Dike Chukwumerije, Umar Abubakar Sidi, Alhanislam and numerous other national stars in performance poetry.
“A key element of the festival would be the performance poetry competition amongst the best performance poets in the country for the newly inaugurated Kudo Eresia-Eke Poetry Prize (K.E.E.P) instituted by More Life Poetry, the organizers of the festival, in honour of the Father of Performance Poetry in Nigeria,” he said.
He said the winner would go home with N1,000,000 and recalled that Eresia-Eke blazed the trail of performance poetry in Nigeria in the late 90s with a raft of albums which featured hit poems like “I Choose”, “Easy to Understand”, “Life”, “Staircase” and numerous others.
He said the festival would also feature workshops, master classes, book readings, author sessions, performance poetry videos, exhibitions, poetry awards and much more.
He added that in tune with the organizer’s commitment to the promotion of poetry amongst the youths as well, the festival would feature the launching of “My Garden City, an anthology of poems by secondary school students in Rivers State.
“More Life Poetry is grateful to its corporate sponsors, especially Nigeria LNG for its steadfast support for excellence in education not only in Rivers State but in Nigeria as a whole.
“More Life Poetry was founded in 2018 by Ken-Adele Marvellous Oruchi, popularly known as Oruz Kennedy. He is also the director of the Port Harcourt Poetry Festival. More Life Poetry was established for the sole purpose of the promotion of poetry in Nigeria, and particularly in Rivers State,” he added.
