Dennis Brutus (1987)

Poet, teacher, activist, and author of such moving collections of poetry as Sirens, Knuckles, and Boots; Letters to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison; A Simple Lust; and Stubborn Hope, Dennis Brutus was imprisoned next to Nelson Mandela in their homeland, South Africa. But Brutus knew, as John Donne, “No man is an island entire unto himself.” For his opposition to injustice, Brutus endured the violence of the state: imprisonment and torture on Robben Island, the terrors of house arrest, the enforced silence of banning, and the pain of exile. Out of these he forged his graceful and penetrating poems. “Still love survives,” Brutus said. Even a few weeks before his death in December 2009, Brutus proclaimed, “We are in serious difficulty all over the planet. We are going to say to the world: there’s too much of profit, too much of greed, too much of suffering by the poor. It must have to stop. The planet must be in action. The people of the planet must be in action.”