Viewing page 2 of 7

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Transcription: [00:02:11]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Okay, but since that time you've written many poems, and
[00:02:16]
many of them interwoven with the struggle in South Africa.

[00:02:20]
{SPEAKER name="Dennis Brutus"}
That's true.

[00:02:21]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Would you go into your experiences there?

[00:02:24]
{SPEAKER name="Dennis Brutus"}
Well, I was banned from writing poetry
[00:02:27]
and I was banned from publishing poetry,
[00:02:30]
but my banning order came as a consequence of my activity in other fields.
[00:02:36]
I was opposing racism in education, racism in housing,
[00:02:41]
the ghettos of South Africa, and particularly racism in sport.
[00:02:46]
The fact that the South African Olympic team was an all-white team
[00:02:50]
and Black athletes were excluded was a thing that made me very angry and I worked on it.
[00:02:56]
I formed an organization with about 60,000 members. I was the secretary of it.
[00:03:02]
We challenged the apartheid structure, we tried to force Black athletes into the Olympics,
[00:03:09]
and when the racists refused, we got them expelled from the Olympics.
[00:03:15]
As a result of that activity I became very unpopular with the apartheid government.
[00:03:21]
I was banned in various ways and forbidden to write,
[00:03:25]
and eventually arrested and sent to prison, so that my involvement was only partly as a writer.

[00:03:32]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Now, some of your works deal with those particular issues and matters.
[00:03:38]
Would you like to read maybe one of them now and we'll go back to them a little later?

[00:03:42]
{SPEAKER name="Dennis Brutus"}
I'll have to read some of the contemporary stuff, it's the only things I have with me today.
[00:03:49]
But before I do that I would say that my work does fall into phases.
[00:03:55]
My first collection, "Sirens, Knuckles, Boots", was published in Nigeria while I was in prison,
[00:04:02]
and it deals essentially with the ghetto experience.
[00:04:08]
After I came out of prison, Robben Island, I had a collection published in Britain, called "Letters to Martha".