Viewing page 1 of 7

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Transcription: [00:00:00]
[[tribal music playing]]
[00:00:25]
[[softer music playing]]


[00:00:31]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
The Literary Corner: Black Writers of the World.
[00:00:35]
A series of analyses and interpretations of Black World literature.
[00:00:39]
Today you'll meet South African exiled poet, Dennis Brutus.
[00:00:43]
Brutus is an expert in African poetry and on apartheid.
[00:00:48]
He's author of 4 major works including Sirens, Knuckles, Boots; Letters to Martha; A Simple Lust; and Stubborn Hope.
[00:00:57]
He's presently Professor in the English Department at Northwestern University.
[00:01:02]
Now, an interview with Dennis Brutus.
[00:01:05]
It begins with an explanation on how and when he started writing poetry
[00:01:09]
and became a Black Writer of the World.
[00:01:12]


[[soft music]]
[00:01:14]


{SPEAKER name="Dennis Brutus"}
I don't really remember what started me off
[00:01:18]
except that my answer is the fact that my mother was a school teacher
[00:01:22]
who liked poetry and recited it and encouraged me to do so
[00:01:27]
may have been the beginnings for me.
[00:01:31]


{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Now, do you remember your first work?
[00:01:34]
Um, many people write that first work and that's something that they really um, become proud of,
[00:01:39]
or some push it into the background and say that it's no good at all.
[00:01:43]


{SPEAKER name="Dennis Brutus"}
I think I remember what was my first work.
[00:01:48]
I certainly didn't preserve it.
[00:01:50]


{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Mm-hmm
[00:01:50]


{SPEAKER name="Dennis Brutus"}
I think they were 4 lines written in the autumn fall, uh, at moonrise one evening.
[00:02:00]
And I tried simply to capture the image of the rising moon without any comment at all.
[00:02:07]
And um, I think that--
[00:02:09]