Watch Botswana’s spoken word artist TJ Dema perform her poem ‘Dreams’

Tjawangwa TJ Dema is a renowned poet, arts administrator and teaching artist from Botswana.

Born in 1981, she has performed her poetry in many countries, including France, Germany, India, South Africa, Malawi and Zimbabwe.  She has also been published in a number of publications, including the Cordite Poetry Review, Elsewhere Lit, the New Orleans Review, and in the Read Women anthology.

She won the 2018 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets for her collection, The Careless Seamstress. She earned the $1000 prize money and a publishing deal in 2019 as part of the African Poetry Book Series by the University of Nebraska Press. In 2014, her chapbook Mandible was published by Slapering Hol Press for the African Poetry Book Fund.

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Here is TJ Dema reciting her poem, Dreams.