dennis brutus, 1924 - 2009

We learned on Saturday evening of the passing of the South African poet and activist Dennis Brutus.

• Activist Dennis Brutus dies (News24, South Africa)
• An activist until the end (News24, South Africa)
• Brutus remembered as an activist who bridged divides (The Star, South Africa)
• Dennis Brutus, Poet, Dies at 85 (New York Times)
• Dennis Vincent Brutus, 1924-2009 (MR Zine)
• In Memoriam: Activist Poet Dennis Brutus (NPR)
• Minister pays tribute to Dennis Brutus (The Times, South Africa)
• Poet, activist Dennis Brutus dies (Mail & Guardian, South Africa)
• Poet and activist Dennis Brutus campaigned to the end (Business Day, South Africa)
• R.I.P. Dennis Brutus, 1924-2009 (Book SA)
• South African poet/activist Dennis Brutus dies (CBC / AP)
• South African Writer, Brutus, Passes On (The Guardian, Nigeria)

The NPR & Book SA remembrances include links to interviews with Brutus; the former also includes a rather perplexing (albeit unfortunately not surprising) comment lamenting NPR's "far too much time" spent on coverage of South Africa!!

I had met Brutus only a few times, thanks to his (and my) work with the African Literature Association, he as a past president and member. He was an outstanding reader of his own work and a passionate, forceful advocate and activist -- as the memorials above highlight, an activist to the end.

Similarly, I've dipped into his work here and there, sporadically. And while I wasn't overawed by his most recent poetic work, there are more than a few poems from Brutus that will, for perhaps too long, stand as both a legacy and reminder of his work and the age we live in (and will always live in):

"Stubborn Hope"

Endurance is a passive quality,
transforms nothing, contests nothing
can change no state to something better
and is worthy of no high esteem;
and so it seems to me my own persistence
deserves, if not contempt, impatience.

Yet somewhere lingers the stubborn hope
thus to endure can be a kind of fight,
preserve some value, assert some faith
and even have a kind of worth.


"Oh God"

Oh God
the sight of these uniformed men
locusting the earth
for their fat harvesters
fills me with sadness
and sick anger and a horror-struck prescience
of the carnage to come

From Stubborn Hope (1978).

Timeless, ageless -- lamentedly ageless. Rest easy -- you fought long and hard.

Addendum (12 January 2010): Not surprisingly, and quite fittingly, online remembrances of Brutus have proliferated. There are also a number of memorials being held, including in Philadelphia this past Sunday and New York on January 15th.

I've found Joyce Nyairo's piece in Kenya's Daily Nation -- Brutus’ poems survive death like they beat -- to be among the best of the brief remembrances: engaging, evoking, and elevating his poetry alongside a life well and strongly led.

Addendum (25 February 2010): A late-appearing obituary in The Guardian by Cameron Duodu.

colloquium on don maclennan

I wasn't at all familiar with the poetry of Don Maclennan prior to my trip to South Africa (and, in particular, before my time in Grahamstown, the home of Rhodes University). And truth be told, I know little more now; though I am also sure that that will change over time (and in subsequent visits).

But this is just the sort of thing I love to see and want to support:

Rhodes University is putting together both a commemorative colloquium & volume of critical essays on the work and life of Don Maclennan. Deadline for proposals is 31 December 2009.

Too bad I won't be able to attend, nor have spent enough time with Maclennan's work to contribute -- but perhaps you can?

As a side note, I discovered this via the BookSA Twitter feed. Maybe it is a fad -- the too easily dismissed "next big thing" -- but I have become a big fan of Twitter and have found it to be a useful tool, in both work and play.