For Rhino in Tandem with Roddy Fox and Harry Owen

Roddy Fox and Harry Owen

  • Ticket Price: R25.00
  • Duration: 8mins
  • Age Recommendation: All Ages
  • Genre: Poetry
  • Language: English

In these videos award winning local landscape photographer Roddy Fox continues his collaboration ‘In Tandem’ with renowned Grahamstown poet Harry Owen. The videos present two poems from the Rhino Anthology (2013).

‘Lord of Life’ is a loving elegy to the rhino written by the late Norman Morrissey. Local artist Sally Scott – another award winner – gave them seven stunning rhino images from the Rhino Anthology to counterpoint Harry’s respectful reading of this long poem. It’s one of the highlights of the book. ‘For Rhino in a Shrinking World: an international anthology’ was compiled and edited by Harry Owen with illustrations by Sally Scott. It was published in 2013 by the Poets Printery in East London (South Africa) and is available from Harry Owen: heo@hotmail.co.uk.

‘Now’ is a small gem, written by American Hannah Armour at the age of ten. They located her though social media friends – she now lives in the USA – and she gave them this reading of her poem. It’s set to two photos of rhinos, by Roddy Fox, in the nearby Fish River valley of the Eastern Cape.

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PRODUCTION CREDITS

Concept: Roddy Fox
Narrators: Harry Owen and Hannah Armour
Video Editor: Roddy Fox
Poems: Norman Morrissey and Hannah Armour
Imagery: Sally Scott and Roddy Fox

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Roddy Fox is a self taught photographer whose first camera, a Zeiss Ikon, was bought in 1974 from a second hand dealer in Glasgow. Since taking early retirement from Rhodes University in 2017 he has pursued his passion for landscape photography and has had four solo exhibitions on the Fringe at the National Arts Festival. 2018’s highlight was winning the WESSA Heritage Day Photo Competition with the nature photograph ‘Oldenburgia’. He’s featured in travel magazines, on-line publications, social and print news media. His first first photo-book ‘Symmetry in Nature’ came out in 2015 and in 2020 this was followed up by ‘Grahamstown 1820-2020: A Heritage PhotoBook’ that is launched in his exhibition gallery at vNAF2020. He has collaborated with Harry Owen designing the book covers for ‘The Cull’ (2017) and ‘Coming Home: poems of the Grahamstown diasporaI’ (2019). He also designed and manages the website for Harry’s Owen’s international anthology ‘For Rhino in a Shrinking World’. His work is available either as print on demand or for download from his online store roddythefox.co.za.

Originally from Liverpool, Harry Owen moved to South Africa from UK in 2008, where he had been the inaugural Poet Laureate for Cheshire in 2003. Outspoken in his commitment to the natural world and a passionate advocate of poetry, he is the author of eight collections, the most recent being ‘Small Stones for Bromley’ (Lapwing Publications, Belfast, 2014); ‘The Cull: new and resurrected poems’ (Poets Printery, East London, 2017); and ‘All Weathers’ (theInkSword, Grahamstown, 2019). He has edited three anthologies – ‘I Write Who I Am: an anthology of Upstart poetry’ (2011); ‘For Rhino in a Shrinking World: an international anthology’ (2013); and ‘Coming Home: poems of the Grahamstown diaspora’ (2019). Harry hosts the popular monthly open floor event called Reddits Poetry here in Grahamstown, where he lives.