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BIOGRAPHY
Dennis Brutus was born on November 28, 1924, in Salisbury, Southern Rho- desia, to South African parents. Francis Henry Brutus and Margaret Winifred Bloemetjie were teachers who, quite early in Brutus’s life, moved to the coastal town of Port Elizabeth, where Brutus grew up in the district of Dowerville with his brother Wilfred and sisters Helena and Dolly. Brutus attended school there irregularly, and so his childhood was one of comparative solitude. Perhaps this was exacerbated by the breakup of his parents.
Too soon, the country’s racial issues would dominate his mind. While Brutus suggests the strength of his literary readings on his development, school also had an important influence on him: it was a ‘‘mixed’’ school, so the color bar was not as evident as it was outside. Brutus realized that as a result of this influence he escaped state indoctrination.
While at high school, he began writing poetry and initiated and edited a student newspaper, the Patersonian Spectator. At age fifteen Brutus attended school regularly and won a City Council bursary to Fort Hare College, Cape; he was one of only two nonwhites to gain university entrance. At Fort Hare Brutus worked on the student newspaper SANC (South African Native College). Brutus’s distinction in English won him a scholarship to do an M.A., but he could not take it up.
In 1948 Brutus became a high-school teacher of English and Afrikaans at St. Thomas Aquinas High School, Port Elizabeth. Though he worked there for a year, he refused to accept the school system’s policies. At school he was in charge of sports and was a member of the editorial committee of Education News. Following his parents’ lead (they were founding members), Brutus joined the Teachers’ League of South Africa. He was active with the league in the 1940s and 1950s. After St. Thomas Aquinas Brutus worked at his old school, Paterson High, as senior English Master, and he returned to poetry after a love affair with a former student. Parents, education, and experience, therefore, as well as apartheid laws, were all influencing Brutus’s direction.
In 1950 Brutus married May Jaggers, with whom he has eight children. From 1950 Brutus found himself, his family, and his students confronting increasingly more horrific laws. ‘‘Letters to the Editor’’ by Brutus appeared in a Port Eliz- abeth newspaper, as did his first published ‘‘mature’’ poem, thus giving him an outlet for his anger at the system; articles also appeared under a variety of noms de plume in the Port Elizabeth Evening Post and the Herald. Perhaps the most significant early piece (written in 1959) was ‘‘Sports Test for South Africa,’’ as it defines the area of combat that Brutus would make his own: only in Atlanta’s 1996 Olympics were South African athletes permitted to make a full return.
In 1955 Brutus helped establish the Co-ordinating Committee for International Relations in Sport to convince international sports bodies to associate only with interracial South African organizations. Brutus chose this method to assault the system, and with novelist Alan Paton as patron, Brutus, as secretary, founded the South African Sports Association (SASA) in October 1958. The organiza- tion’s goal was to draw attention to South Africa’s infringement of the Olympic Charter and to advocate nonracial sports. SASA was soon noticed, and Brutus fell under the scrutiny of the Special Branch. Undoubtedly, the attention of the latter was due to Brutus’s lead in SASA’s first victory: the ability to persuade the West Indies cricket team to cancel a trip to South Africa in October 1959.
The Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and the ensuing state of emergency may have contributed most fully to Brutus’s active participation in the resistance. By 1960 the limited output of poetry became political too, through an intermingling of love for South Africa and for a young white woman with whom he was having an affair at the time. Forbidden to teach, write, and publish and fired from his teaching position in 1961, he was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act. Ironically, the same legal system that brought about the Re- public of South Africa was denying the existence of an exemplary inhabitant. Brutus moved to Johannesburg to work as a secretary in a private school, Central High School, Johannesburg, for one year. From 1962 to 1963 he studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand. A further order that prevented the repro- duction of writings by Brutus in any way was issued in July 1962. SASA be- came South African Non-Racial Open (later Olympic) Committee (SANROC) in 1962, and Brutus was placed under house arrest, pending trial, for his in- volvement in the organization. In 1963 South Africa was suspended from the 1964 Tokyo games.
The year 1963 saw some of Brutus’s poems published in Ruth First’s journal Fighting Talk and then his arrest. Brutus escaped in September while on bail. After leaving Swaziland legally, he was arrested at the Mozambique border by Portuguese secret police and handed over to the South African security police.
Brutus attempted to escape again, fearing that his arrest was not known to other activists and that his treatment at the hands of the police would reflect this fact. He was shot in the back. Hospitalization was followed by eighteen months of hard labor, including time on Robben Island.
Brutus was placed under house arrest in Port Elizabeth upon his release from prison and received a further ban on writing. This situation gave rise to Letters to Martha. The banning order and John Harris’s execution severely weakened SANROC’s activities in South Africa. On July 31, 1966, after a year under house arrest, Brutus arrived in London with his wife and children on an exit permit (that is, if he returned to South Africa, he would be subject to arrest). His decision to leave South Africa was based on renewing the fight against apartheid.
In London Brutus worked as a journalist and teacher, compiled a collection of Arthur Nortje’s poems for Heinemann, and assembled Letters to Martha with Cosmo Pieterse, who selected the poems. A return to overt action occurred when Brutus was charged, and released, after he interrupted a tennis game at Wim- bledon that featured the South African Cliff Drysdale. The previous week, Wil- fred Brutus had been charged with disturbing the peace. As a result, when charged with the demonstration at Wimbledon, Dennis Brutus was also mistak- enly charged with ‘‘violating his probation’’ because the police took him for his brother. The case was appealed and counterappealed until, funded by Inter- national Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF), Brutus took it to the House of Lords. In a decision entitled Cousins vs. Brutus, the Lords ruled in Brutus’s favor and established a precedent for the right to demonstrate in public places.
Travels by the exile on a number of issues began: in January 1968, to Cuba for a cultural congress; in February 1970, to Texas for a colloquium on ‘‘The Black Experience’’; and in March to testify before the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid; he then visited Algiers for the Panafrican Arts Festival. He became a visiting professor at the University of Denver in September 1970. Brutus intended to return to the United Kingdom permanently; however, the year’s stay at Denver revealed America to be a greater power base. On Brutus’s return to London, four offers of employment in the United States arrived.
In 1970 South Africa was excluded from the Olympic Games, as was Rho- desia in 1972. In 1973 Brutus was a guest of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This visit was an added catalyst for Brutus’s interest in minimalist po- etry. From 1974 to 1975 Brutus was a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The African Literature Association (ALA) was founded at this time, with Brutus organizing the first conference and being elected the first president. In June 1974 Brutus was an African National Congress (ANC) del- egate at the Sixth Pan-African Congress in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. He also broadcast to the people of South Africa on the ANC radio station in Lusaka. From 1975 to 1985 Brutus worked as a visiting professor in the Department of English at Northwestern University, and his well-publicized battle for asylum in the United States began. Index on Censorship notes that Brutus had to surrender his United Kingdom passport when Zimbabwe became independent. Bru- tus was ordered to leave the United States; he appealed, but the appeal was refused because ‘‘his waiver of excludability—had expired’’ (Ralph-Bowman, 13). The Reagan administration seemed determined to rid itself of Brutus’s crit- icisms during the period of ‘‘constructive engagement’’ with South Africa. How- ever, on September 6, 1983, Brutus was granted asylum in the United States.
In 1986 Brutus moved to the University of Pittsburgh, where he continues to teach and is the former director of the Department of Black Community, Edu- cation, Research, and Development. Activities continue in the form of prefaces and introductions to volumes on South Africa, in his perennial attendance and participation in the ALA, and in his chairing the important series of symposia on ‘‘Post Apartheid South Africa.’’ One reason for this series of symposia is to address the limited quantity of forethought about the ‘‘reconstruction’’ of South African society after apartheid. The planning that had been undertaken was by a small group, an idea that displeases the egalitarian in Brutus.
Brutus’s return to South Africa occurred in July 1991 for the South African Committee on Olympic Sport (SACOS) conference in Durban, where he re- ceived an award of merit for antiapartheid work. In an interview with Sondra Gair, Brutus talked briefly of the personal experience of return: ‘‘I would say that . . . for the majority of people, and particularly the non-whites, the blacks, life has become worse’’ (National Public Radio).
MAJOR WORKS AND THEMES
While in prison, Brutus learned that Mbari had published his first book, Sirens Knuckles Boots. Dennis Williams of Mbari, against Brutus’s advice, chose to mix love poems and political poems in the volume rather than opting for a unidimensional volume. The volume won Brutus the 1962 Mbari Prize, but he refused the money because the prize was restricted to blacks only. The American writer Paul Theroux provided one of the first critiques of the collection; in ‘‘Voices out of the Skull,’’ Theroux described Brutus’s work as thematically centered on freedom. Theroux concluded that Brutus’s poetry was remarkable for its political conviction. Many of these poems, as is the case with the majority of Brutus’s works, are untitled because he thinks that they are self-explanatory. The volume has been well received critically. Clarity and sophistication in state- ment as well as the control and economy of form produce a dense volume of ‘‘metaphysical’’ poems.
Letters to Martha was published in 1968. These poems are based on Brutus’s prison experiences and are written to his sister-in-law; Brutus’s brother was in Robben Island prison at the time serving forty-five months for antiapartheid activities. This volume met with critical praise for individual poems, but many critics felt that the lack of chronological flow diminished the book, while ex- asperating the reader and weakening the political impact of the experiences described. Myrna Blumberg, for example, admired the ‘‘deft simplicity’’ of the first part, while C. J. Driver criticized the ‘‘unnecessarily polysyllabic, formless . . . generalised and generalising nature of several of the poems’’ (Driver, 109). It is most certainly an admirable work in the form and content of the individual letters. Individual experience contains an element of the communal experience, but the letter format, ingenious in its revolt against the banning order, is not accessible to a large readership. If not fully successful, the volume is the work of a writer nearing the end of his apprenticeship.
Poems from Algiers (nine poems) was published in 1970, as was Thoughts Abroad. The first volume is a mimeographed pamphlet of handwritten poems marked by an ‘‘oblique’’ and ‘‘indirect’’ approach to self-assessment. The po- ems are uneven in poetic quality; the first, ‘‘And I Am Driftwood,’’ is the best in its measured flow and differentiation of the exile from those at/with home. The latter volume was published under the pseudonym of John Bruin (Bruin is Afrikaans for a nonwhite person) so that copies could be sent to South Africa, where Brutus’s writing was still under a banning order. Brutus and the critic Bernth Lindfors established Troubadour Press to publish the work. Thoughts Abroad, which is an incomplete allusion to Browning’s ‘‘Home Thoughts from Abroad,’’ clearly reflects the state of exile. Brutus’s penchant for punning also evokes a Sinatra-esque thought of ‘‘a broad,’’ reflecting the parallel in Brutus’s poetry between a woman and South Africa. Each poem carries a place name, a locale from which the experience or reflection was elicited. This form of labeling underscores the poet’s prolonged exile, his travels to advance the cause of an- tiapartheid groups, and, not insignificantly, the poet’s lack of a home. These poems are, then, produced in flight (literally); they evoke a sense of the place visited; they suggest, through absence, the homeland that was Brutus’s rightful subject. Indeed, the sensuous nature of several of the descriptions is a reminder of the earlier verse, where woman is used as a metaphor for the persona’s engagement with his land. In Thoughts Abroad, not surprisingly, the connection is never fully made with the new landscapes. Nadine Gordimer offered an early positive review of the volume. Copies were available in South Africa until the publication of A Simple Lust, which ultimately gave away Bruin’s real identity. Brutus remembers the Troubadour Press as successful in that a reasonable num- ber of volumes were sold to cover costs.
Cosmo Pieterse published some of Brutus’s poetry in the influential Seven South African Poets (1971). A Simple Lust (1973) offered new and selected poems from Sirens Knuckles Boots, Poems from Algiers, and Thoughts Abroad as well as a reordered Letters to Martha. A Simple Lust is Brutus’s most im- portant collection because it provided a retrospective of his career to date. Re- visions to earlier poems, as has been noted by G. D. Killam, reveal a more assured editorial sense, while the reordering of Letters answered and nullified the criticism of that earlier volume. Paul Kameen emphasizes the ‘‘more con- vincing, and often poignant’’ (298) nature of Brutus’ meditative work in this volume, while cautioning poet and reader against those poems that offer numerous unrealizable possibilities because they tend toward the diffuse, abstract, and unfocused sentiment.
China Poems and Strains were published in 1975. China Poems represents only Brutus’s drafts, as many of the poems written in China were given to the PRC as a gift when he left. These pieces lack the natural images found in traditional chueh chu. Most are devoid of personal emotion, offering instead uncritical political statements of a general nature. Brutus gave up writing for a time after the publication of this pamphlet, as he had done in the past when he felt that the writing was obvious and effortless. He also felt that there were too many problems he had to address at that time before he could write. His need was to find out where he was and to act. For Brutus the first principle is the fight against injustice. The art may suffer on occasion, but for good reason:
In order for me to make a total commitment to poetry, I would have to remake myself. This is not impossible, in the sense that I could wholly shut out, say, my political activity, my organising work, my sport, the kind of chores I do from day to day with this or that committee, and so on. I think it would not be impossible, but it would be immoral. This is what really stops me: that a total commitment to the craft of poetry, with the kind of integrity which that implies, would do damage to what I now regard as essential to integrity for me. Which means social concern. (Lindfors, ‘‘Somehow,’’ 51)
Stubborn Hope preceded the announcement of Brutus’s receipt of the 1979 Kenneth Kaunda Humanism Award by one year. Goodwin and Amuta represent the two principal positions critics have taken over this text. Goodwin sees the volume as ‘‘carelessly arranged,’’ even repeating ‘‘one poem’’ (22); he argues that they ‘‘are crude poems obviously designed—for political rallies,’’ (23), whereas his ‘‘earliest poems are bejewelled metaphysical artefacts in imposed forms’’ (27). Amuta, on the other hand, advances a positive review of the poems, placing a Marxist emphasis on Lindfors’s earlier espousal (which ended with Strains) of Brutus’s ‘‘Dialectical Development. ’’
Brutus is merely exploring the general through the specific by stressing their dialectical relatedness. Stubborn Hope represents an advancement, politically, on Brutus’ earlier verse. . . . In Stubborn Hope . . . it would appear that the experience of exile and the compelling need for urgent militant action against apartheid forces him to abandon his earlier approach in favour of more direct, declamatory and structurally uncomplicated verse. (179, 180)
Goodwin’s analysis, which also parallels Lindfors’s sense of Brutus’s direction, is the more balanced. Ultimately, the choices and the changes in expression are aimed principally at a non–South African audience, one that is aware of the injustices of apartheid, but also one that has a developed critical sensibility. Perhaps, now that Brutus’s banning order is lifted, the South African masses will be more receptive to the new aesthetic in his poetry. Brutus’s Stubborn Hope fits Amuta’s specific prescriptions about art. Brutus, on the other hand, sees that ‘‘there is no uncommitted writing. . . . You have to decide which side you are on: there is always a side’’ (Brutus, ‘‘Literature and Commitment,’’ 81). Brutus’s commitment is a commitment to ‘‘recovering our humanity’’ (82), whether in early metaphysical work or more recent and overt political statement. In Stubborn Hope the writing is clear and direct; while the volume lacks literary experimentation, it compensates with a consistent and dogged concern for the exposure of injustice, a call for change. Some of the best pieces in this collection are the meditations on people who have shared in apartheid’s suffering, for example, his children’s loss of a father (4).
Salutes and Censures was published in Nigeria in 1982. It marks a return to an African publisher, as well as a broadening of material, but like China Poems, it is aestheticallyweak. Much of Brutus’s poetry in exile has been occasional poetry.
Later verse commemorates real martyrs, victims, and heroes as well as their battles, defeats, and causes. Brutus’s writing is an aesthetic experience because of the insight and value it reveals at the core of political events, experiences, and the people involved. The resonance found in the poetry is due to the fact that Brutus writes to life. Thus the poems are catalysts that refresh commitment, not package it for storage. Above all else, these occasional poems provide in- tellectual, cultural, and social validation of important issues, items needed in a society dominated by mass media.
Both A Simple Lust and Stubborn Hope were unbanned in South Africa in 1988. The year 1989 also brought forth Airs and Tributes, a chapbook of sev- enteen judiciously selected poems. Concern with place and its experiential value remains a consistent thread with his earlier work. There is a return to the pre- cision of Sirens Knuckles Boots and Letters to Martha, the opposition of reasons for hope and the necessity of continued resistance. These poems are kin to ‘‘Sequence for South Africa’’ first published in South African Voices, then re- printed in Stubborn Hope: ‘‘Victory Edition’’: deliberated and worked-upon meditations that affirm the poet’s maturity, the balance of the poetic with the political.
Still the Sirens suggests a cycle, a return to the first volume. The poems, again, are occasional in nature, representing a slim chapbook of Brutus’s con- cerns and poetics throughout his career. Many pieces address comrades and family felled on the path to a victory that remains incomplete for Brutus. ‘‘En- durance’’ is the most significant and complex poem.
CRITICAL RECEPTION
Brutus’s work, as McLuckie and Colbert’s annotated bibliography confirms, has been widely reviewed and analyzed. Critical reception internationally con- firms the impact and longevity of the first major volume, A Simple Lust. Too little critical work has been undertaken with respect to Brutus’s numerous writ- ings for the press. This work needs to be collected into an accessible volume because of its historical and human significance. Relatedly, a critical biography, placing the poems in the context of the activism, is much needed. Collections of Brutus’s writings are available at the Michael J. Herskovits Library of Afri- cana, Northwestern University; the Schomburg Center Collection, New York; the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; and the Cen- tre for Southern African Studies, University of York, England.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Selected Works by Dennis Vincent Frederick Brutus
Poetry
Airs and Tributes. Ed. Gil Otto. Introd. Samuel Allen. Camden, N.J.: Whirlwind Press, 1989.
China Poems. Austin: African and Afro-American Studies and Research Center, Uni- versity of Texas at Austin, 1975.
‘‘For the Prisoners of South Africa’’ (a broadsheet). n.p.: Slash and Burn Press, 1986.
Letters to Martha, and Other Poems from a South African Prison. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1968.
Poems from Algiers. Austin: African and Afro-American Research Institute, University of Texas at Austin, 1970.
Salutes and Censures. Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension Publ. Co., 1982.
‘‘Sequence for South Africa.’’ South African Voices. Ed. Bernth Lindfors. Occasional Publication 11. Austin, TX: African and Afro-American Studies and Research Center, 1975. 31–34.
A Simple Lust: Collected Poems of South African Jail and Exile Including ‘‘Letters to Martha.’’ London: Heinemann Educational Books; New York: Hill and Wang, 1973.
Sirens Knuckles Boots. Ibadan, Nigeria: Mbari Productions; Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1963.
Still the Sirens. Santa Fe: Pennywhistle Press, 1993.
(John Bruin) Strains. Ed. Wayne Kamin and Chip Dameron. Del Valle, TX.: Troubadour Press, 1975.
Stubborn Hope. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1978; London: Heinemann, 1978. Reprint. London: Heinemann, 1991.
Stubborn Hope: ‘‘Victory Edition’’: New Poems and Selected Poems from China Poems and Strains. Augmented ed. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1983.
(John Bruin) Thoughts Abroad. Del Valle, TX: Troubadour Press, 1970.
Non-fiction
Brutus and Robert Baker. ‘‘The Conference on International Sport, Politics, Racism, and Apartheid—An Overview.’’ Journal of Sport and Social Issues 2.2 (Fall/Winter 1978): 4–6.
Denis [sic] Brutus. ‘‘Cultural Liberation and the African Revolution.’’ World Inequality: Origins and Perspectives of the World System. Ed. Immanuel Wallerstein. Mon- treal: Black Rose Books, 1975. 152–156.
‘‘Founding the A.L.A.: African Publishing Houses: A Proposal.’’ Antioch Review 38 (Spring 1980): 233–236.
‘‘From the Introduction to Salutes and Censures.’’ From South Africa. Ed. David Bunn et al. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 363–367.
‘‘In Memoriam: Arthur Nortje, 1942–1970.’’ Research in African Literatures 2 (1971): 26–27.
‘‘International Declaration: U.N. Action—Summary.’’ Journal of Sport and Social Issues 2.2 (Fall/Winter 1978): 1–3.
‘‘Introduction to ‘Two Unpublished Poems by Arthur Nortje.’ ’’ Gar 33 (February 1979): 25.
(Panelist). ‘‘Literature and Commitment in South Africa.’’ Contemporary Black South African Literature: A Symposium. Ed. Bernth Lindfors. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1975, revised and augmented in 1985.
‘‘Poetry of Suffering: The Black Experience.’’ Ba Shiru 4.2 (1973): 1–10.
‘‘Protest against Apartheid.’’ Protest and Conflict in African Literature. Ed. Cosmo Pie- terse and Donald Munro. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1969. 93–100.
D.A. ‘‘Sports Test for South Africa.’’ Africa South 3.4 (July–September 1959): 35–39. ‘‘The Sportsman’s Choice.’’ Apartheid,a Collection of Writings on South African Racism
by South Africans. Ed. Alex La Guma. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1972. ‘‘[Statement for a Cultural Boycott].’’ Index on Censorship 4.1 (Spring 1975): 42.
‘‘Testimony.’’ South African Prisons and the Red Cross Investigation (white paper). London: Christian Action Publications for International Defence and Aid Fund, 1967.
‘‘Two Poems by Nortje, with a Note by Dennis Brutus.’’ African Literature Today 10: Retrospect and Prospect. London and Ibadan: Heinemann; New York: Africana, 1979. 231–232.
Witness. United Nations Unit on Apartheid, Department of Political and Security Council Affairs. Special Committee on Apartheid Hears Mr. Dennis Brutus, no. 7/70. New York, March 1970.
Panel discussant for various sessions. The Writer in Modern Africa: African- Scandinavian Writers’ Conference (Stockholm, 1967). Ed. Per Wastberg. New York: African Publ. Corp., 1969.
Selected Studies of Dennis Vincent Frederick Brutus
(Mainly Post–1975)
Abasiekong, Daniel. ‘‘Poetry Pure and Applied: Rabearivelo and Brutus. ’’ Transition 5.23 (1965): 45–48.
Abrahams, Cecil. ‘‘Aesthetics and Protest in South African Literature.’’ MANA 5.2 (1980); ACLCLSB 6.1 (1982).
——— . ‘‘The South African Writer in a Changing Society.’’ Matatu 2.3–4 (1988): 32– 43.
Alvarez-Pereyre, Jacques. ‘‘The First Generation of Committed Black Poets.’’ The Poetry of Commitment in South Africa. Trans. Clive Wake. London: Heinemann Edu- cational Books, 1984. 130–145.
Amuta, Chidi. ‘‘Private Experience as Public Protest: Dennis Brutus’ Stubborn Hope. ’’ The Theory of African Literature. London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1989.
Asein, S. O. ‘‘Troubadours, Wanderers, and Other Exiles.’’ Comparative Approaches to Modern African Literature. Ed. S. O. Asein. Ibadan: Dept. of English, 1983. 125– 132.
Barnett, Ursula A. A Vision of Order: A Study of Black South African Literature in English (1914–1980). London: Sinclair Browne; Amherst: University of Massa- chusetts Press, 1983. 89–100.
Benson, Peter. ‘‘Black Orpheus,’ ‘Transition,’’ and Modern Cultural Awakening in Af- rica. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1986. 27, 31, 42, 59, 123, 126, 282.
Blumberg, Myrna. ‘‘Of Degradation and Joy.’’ The Guardian Weekly 100. 10 (March 6, 1969): 114.
Diuto. ‘‘The Life and Loves of a Mirthless Troubadour: The Poetry of Dennis Brutus. ’’ Muse 12 (1980): 50, 53.
Donne, John. ‘‘Remembering Dennis Brutus.’’ Medu Art Ensemble Newsletter 2.2: 15– 20.
Driver, C. J. ‘‘The View from Makana Island: Some Recent Prison Books from South Africa.’’ Journal of Southern African Studies 2.1 (October 1975): 109–119.
Duerden, Dennis, and Cosmo Pieterse, eds. African Writers Talking. 2nd ed. London: Heinemann, 1975. 52–61.
Egudu, Romanus N. ‘‘African Literature and Social Problems.’’ Canadian Journal of African Studies 9.3 (1975): 421–447.
——— . ‘‘Pictures of Pain: The Poetry of Dennis Brutus.’’ Aspects of South African Literature. Ed. Christopher Heywood. London: Heinemann Educational Books; New York: Africana Publ. Corp., 1976. 131–144.
Elimimian, Isaac I. ‘‘Form and Meaning in the Poetry of Dennis Brutus.’’ Literary Half- Yearly 28.1 (July 1986): 70–78.
Ezenwa-Ohaeto. ‘‘Art in Pain: A Study of the Dangers and Prospects of Protest Poetry through Two Representative South African Poets.’’ Literary Half-Yearly 25.1 (1984): 17–38.
Gair, Sondra. National Public Radio interview with Dennis Brutus. WBEZ/Chicago. July 26, 1991.
Gardner, Colin. ‘‘Brutus and Shakespeare.’’ Research in African Literatures 15.3 (Fall 1984): 354–364.
Goodwin, Ken. ‘‘Dennis Brutus.’’ Understanding African Poetry: A Study of Ten Poets. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1982. 1–29.
Imfeld, Al. ‘‘Dennis Brutus—Apartheid und Atomkraft vernichten uns. ’’ Vision und Waffe: Afrikanische Autoren, Themen, Traditionen. Zurich: Unionsverlag, 1981. 295–304.
Jacobs, J. U. ‘‘In a Free State: The Exile in South African Poetry.’’ Momentum: On Recent South African Writing. Ed. M. J. Daymond et al. Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: University of Natal Press, 1984. 243–259.
Kameen, Paul. Bestsellers 33.13 (October 1, 1973): 298.
Katz, Jane. Artists in Exile. New York: Stein and Day, 1983. 31–42.
Killam, G. D. ‘‘A Simple Lust: Selection, Structure and Style.’’ Cultural Perspectives on Dennis Brutus. Ed. Craig W. McLuckie and Patrick J. Colbert. Colorado Springs: Three Continents Press, 1995. 86–98.
Lapchick, Richard. The Politics of Race and International Sport: The Case of South Africa. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975.
Legum, Colin, and Margaret Legum. The Bitter Choice: Eight South Africans’ Resistance to Tyranny. Cleveland and New York: World Publ. Co., 1968. 151–162.
Lindfors, Bernth. ‘‘Dennis Brutus and His Critics’’ and ‘‘Dialectical Development in the Poetry of Dennis Brutus.’’ The Blind Men and the Elephant and Other Essays in Biographical Criticism. Adelaide: Centre for Research in the New Literature in English, The Flinders University of South Australia, 1987. 14–25 and 26–36, respectively.
——— . ‘‘Dennis Brutus’ Mousey Tongue’’ (from the symposium on South African Literature and the inaugural meeting of the African Literature Association held at the University of Texas, Austin, March 19–22, 1975). World Literature Written in English 15: 7–16.
——— . ‘‘John Bruin: South African Enigma in Del Valle, Texas.’’ Africa Today 18.4 (1974): 72–77.
——— . ‘‘ ‘Somehow Tenderness Survives’: Dennis Brutus Talks about His Life and Poetry.’’ Benin Review 1.1 (1974): 44–55.
McLuckie, Craig W., and Patrick J. Colbert, eds. Critical Perspectives on Dennis Brutus. Colorado Springs, CO: Three Continents Press, 1995.
Meester, Ria de. ‘‘An Introduction to Dennis Brutus’ Prison Poems.’’ Restant 8.2 (1980): 47–56.
Moyana, T. T. ‘‘The Problems of a Creative Writer in South Africa.’’ Aspects of South African Literature. Ed. Christopher Heywood. London: Heinemann, 1976. 85–98.
Mphahlele, Ezekiel. ‘‘Contemporary African Literature. ’’ Lincoln University African Center Quarterly Review 1.2 (1969): 1–28.
Ndu, Pol. ‘‘Passion and Poetry in the Works of Dennis Brutus.’’ Black Academy Review 2.1–2 (Spring–Summer 1971): 41–54.
Ngara, Emmanuel. Ideology and Form in African Poetry. London: James Currey, 1990. 57, 131–133, 143, 192–193, 199.
Nkondo, Gessler Moses. ‘‘Dennis Brutus and the Revolutionary Idea.’’ Ufahamu 10.3 (1981): 78–91.
——— . ‘‘Dennis Brutus: The Domestication of a Tradition.’’World Literature Today 55.1 (Winter 1981): 32–40.
Nkosi, Lewis. Tasks and Masks. London: Longman, 1981. 101, 114, 116–167.
Ogundele, Wole. ‘‘The Exile’s Progress: Dennis Brutus’ Poetry in the First Phase of His Exile.’’ Commonwealth Essays and Studies 10.2 (Spring 1988): 88–97.
Ogunyemi, Chikwenye Okonjo. ‘‘The Song of the Caged Bird: Contemporary African Prison Poetry.’’ Ariel 13.4 (October 1982): 65–84.
Ojaide, Tanure. ‘‘The Troubadour: The Poet’s Persona in the Poetry of Dennis Brutus. ’’ Ariel 17.1 (January 1986): 55–69.
Onuekwusi, Jasper A. ‘‘Pain and Anguish of a South African Poet: Dennis Brutus and South African Reality.’’ Literary Criterion 23.1–2 (1988): 59–68.
Ralph-Bowman, Mark. ‘‘Dennis Brutus: Shall I Be Deported from the USA?’’ Index on Censorship 12.3 (1983): 13–16.
Riemenschneider, Dieter. ‘‘Yet Somewhere Lingers the Stubborn Hope.’’ Salutes: Se- lected Essays. Ed. Monika Idehen. Evanston, IL: Troubadour Press/Whirlwind Press, 1994. 121–128.
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©CRAIG W. MCLUCKIE
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