Dennis Brutus
Dennis Brutus (1924–2009) was a South African poet, teacher and campaigner against apartheid, the system of racial segregation imposed by the South African government. He was born in Salisbury, now Harare, and grew up in Port Elizabeth.[1]
Campaigning and exile
Brutus helped organise opposition to racial segregation in sport. In 1961 he was banned from teaching, writing and speaking publicly. He was later imprisoned for breaking banning orders, serving part of his sentence on Robben Island. He left South Africa for Britain in 1966 and moved to the United States in 1970, where he taught at Northwestern University and the University of Pittsburgh.[1]
Poetry
His collections include Sirens, Knuckles, Boots (1963), Letters to Martha (1968) and Airs and Tributes (1989). In his account of Brutus’s writing, scholar Bernth Lindfors describes both its opposition to injustice and its expressions of tenderness and longing.[2]
Brutus died in Cape Town on 26 December 2009.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 South African History Online, “Dennis Brutus”, updated 23 August 2019. Accessed 10 October 2026.
- ↑ Andrew Martin, Poems of Dennis Brutus: A Checklist, 1945–2004 (Madison: Parallel Press, 2005), Bernth Lindfors’s tribute, pp. 8–9, and bibliographical entry, p. 25.