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{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
The Literary Corner: Black Writers of the World.
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A series of analyses and interpretations of Black World literature.
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Today you'll meet South African exiled poet, Dennis Brutus.
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Brutus is an expert in African poetry and on apartheid.
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He's author of 4 major works including Sirens, Knuckles, Boots; Letters to Martha; A Simple Lust; and Stubborn Hope.
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He's presently Professor in the English Department at Northwestern University.
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Now, an interview with Dennis Brutus.
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It begins with an explanation on how and when he started writing poetry
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and became a Black Writer of the World.
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{SPEAKER name="Dennis Brutus"}
I don't really remember what started me off
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except that my answer is the fact that my mother was a school teacher
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who liked poetry and recited it and encouraged me to do so
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may have been the beginnings for me.
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{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Now, do you remember your first work?
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Um, many people write that first work and that's something that they really um, become proud of,
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or some push it into the background and say that it's no good at all.
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{SPEAKER name="Dennis Brutus"}
I think I remember what was my first work.
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I certainly didn't preserve it.
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{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Mm-hmm
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{SPEAKER name="Dennis Brutus"}
I think they were 4 lines written in the autumn fall, uh, at moonrise one evening.
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And I tried simply to capture the image of the rising moon without any comment at all.
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And um, I think that--
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