Tjawangwa Dema / TJ Dema is a Botswana-based poet, arts administrator and teaching artist.
Her chapbook Mandible (Slapering Hol Press, 2014) was selected for publication by The African Poetry Book Fund as part of its inaugural New-Generation African Poets Box Set. Her first full-length book The Careless Seamstress (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and was a Brittle Paper Top 15 Debut Book of 2019. A collection of her selected poems were published in German as Meuterin (Parasitenpress) in 2022 and a Portuguese collection A costureira descuidada was published in 2023 by Fósforo Editora/Circulo de Poemas.. Her collection an/other pastoral (No Bindings, 2022) with illustrations and an accompanying digital archive was a Finalist for the 2022 Luschei Prize and the 2022 African Studies Association Aidoo-Snyder Book Award, long listed for the 2022 UK Poetry Book Awards and named a 100 Notable African Book by Brittle Paper . A Portuguese collection A costureira descuidada was published in 2023 by Fósforo Editora/Circulo de Poemas.
Formerly an Honorary Senior Research Associate in the Department of English at the University of Bristol, Honorary Fellow of The University of Iowa’s International Writing Program as well as Chairperson of the Writers’ Association of Botswana, in 2023 Tjawangwa was invited to address the United Nations Habitat Assembly. In 2015 Dema partnered with the African Poetry Book Fund and the Gaborone Public Library to set up a poetry reading room in Botswana. She gave the Ohio University African Studies Spring Lecture and the 2020 University of Southampton’s F T Prince Memorial Lecture. She has given readings in over twenty countries in places including Rio, New York, Lagos, Berlin, Delhi, Paris, Tallinn, Harare, Medellin, Lisbon, London, Singapore, Johannesburg and Gaborone. She has facilitated workshops in numerous countries and in particular her eco-poetry writing and/or workshops have been featured in the University of Southern California’s Vision & Voices programme, a two-day series for Penn State University, a masterclass for the University of The Witwatersrand and a climate reset provocation for the University of Oxford Systems Week.
Tjawangwa is an alumna of the HarperCollins Author Academy in Writing for Children. In 2020, her audioplay ‘Food of the Gods’ was staged as part of Popelei’s award winning digital season and her monologue was joint winner of the Women-in-Lockdown Seed Commission. Her poems have been re-worked by bands into lyrics, used for theatre and dance collaborations, recorded as videos, dropped as postcards from a helicopter over London and translated into languages including Spanish, Serbian, Chinese, Korean, Croatian and Swedish. Her poem ‘Lethe’ was selected as the 2020 Zebra Poetry Film Festival ‘Festival Poem’ around which filmmakers were invited to create short filmic responses. One of these poetry videos went on to win a ZPFF award as well as a Northwest Artist Award at the Cadence Video Poetry Festival. Her poem-film ‘Cadastral: The Black Girl Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ was a world premiere for Glasgow’s Africa in Motion Film Festival 2021.
Tjawangwa’s work has been supported by Arts Council England, the Danish Arts Council, MYSC Botswana, various embassies, the Vermont Studio Centre and Northwestern University’s Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities among others. Her honours include a Botswana Top 40 under 40 Catalyst award as well as a Mail and Guardian Editor’s Choice award. She has also been long-listed for the Women Poets’ Prize and shortlisted for the position of Bristol City Poet. She holds an MA in Creative Writing and facilitates writing and performance workshops around the globe.
Tjawangwa formerly co-produced the Africa Writes – Bristol Festival and currently serves on the ‘On African Poetry’ Editorial Committee, the Lyra Poetry Festival steering committee as well as the Bristol Poetry Institute Partnerships Board.
Latest News
LATEST PROJECTS* Art Residency Centre – ARC Resident 2023
Creating gallery guide for Forest: Wake this Ground art exhibition. Ran 8 July – Oct 2, 2022, Arnolfini, Bristol.
NEW BOOK ALERT* an/other pastoral (No Bindings, April 22, 2022)
NEW BOOK TRANSLATION ALERT* Meuterin is out in German (Parasitenpresse, February 2022)
BRUNEL/EVARISTO POETRY PRIZE JUDGE: Tjawangwa returns as one of three judges for the 2024 Evaristo Prize for African Poetry.
Tjawangwa Dema’s poems are as bold, roving, and insistent as they are delicate and incisive. The Careless Seamstress is a ravishing debut —Tracy K. Smith, U.S. poet laureate and author of Wade in the Water: Poems
Interests: Intertextuality, Eco-poetics, Gender, Labour, the fe/male gaze, Poetics of Enquiry, Reading Out Loud, Blackness, Mythology, and the Religious Imaginary.