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{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Okay, but since that time you've written many poems, and
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many of them interwoven with the struggle in South Africa.

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{SPEAKER name="Dennis Brutus"}
That's true.

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{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Would you go into your experiences there?

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{SPEAKER name="Dennis Brutus"}
Well, I was banned from writing poetry
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and I was banned from publishing poetry,
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but my banning order came as a consequence of my activity in other fields.
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I was opposing racism in education, racism in housing,
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the ghettos of South Africa, and particularly racism in sport.
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The fact that the South African Olympic team was an all-white team
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and Black athletes were excluded was a thing that made me very angry and I worked on it.
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I formed an organization with about 60,000 members. I was the secretary of it.
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We challenged the apartheid structure, we tried to force Black athletes into the Olympics,
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and when the racists refused, we got them expelled from the Olympics.
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As a result of that activity I became very unpopular with the apartheid government.
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I was banned in various ways and forbidden to write,
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and eventually arrested and sent to prison, so that my involvement was only partly as a writer.

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{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Now, some of your works deal with those particular issues and matters.
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Would you like to read maybe one of them now and we'll go back to them a little later?

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{SPEAKER name="Dennis Brutus"}
I'll have to read some of the contemporary stuff, it's the only things I have with me today.
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But before I do that I would say that my work does fall into phases.
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My first collection, "Sirens, Knuckles, Boots", was published in Nigeria while I was in prison,
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and it deals essentially with the ghetto experience.
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After I came out of prison, Robben Island, I had a collection published in Britain, called "Letters to Martha".