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46 BRUTUS: POETRY CHECKLIST 
Contributors 
Andrew Martin 
Andrew Martin is a literary researcher/bibliographer at the National English
Literary Museum in Grahamstown, South Africa. He has a Bachelor of Social
Science Degree and Post-Graduate Diploma in Library and Information Science
from the University of Cape Town. He collaborated with Hein Willemse on a
bibli- 
ography of the South African poets Peter E. Clarke and James Matthews con-
tained in More than Brothers: Peter Clarke and James Matthews at Seventy,
pub- 
lished by Kwela in 2000, and has had a few of his own poems published. 
Dennis Brutus 
Dennis Brutus was born in Southern Rhodesia in 1924, and moved to South Africa
with his family at an early age. He was schooled in Port Elizabeth and attended
Fort Hare, after which he taught at schools in Port Elizabeth. It was during
this 
time that Dennis Brutus' political activism began, in opposition to apartheid
and, 
in particular, to the refusal of the government to allow black athletes to
represent 
South Africa internationally. As a founder and secretary of the South African
Sports 
Association (SASA) from 1958, and later as founding chairman of the South
African 
Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC), in 1963, he was instrumental in secur-
ing South Africa's expulsion from the Olympic games and other international
sporting events. Brutus' activities resulted in his being banned by the South
African government and prohibited from being published or even quoted. This
prompted a move to Johannesburg to study law at University of the 
Witwatersrand. After an attempt to leave South Africa, Brutus was arrested
and 
then shot by South African police in an escape attempt. He was sentenced
to 
eighteen months of hard labor on Robben Island. After his release in 1965,
Brutus 
was placed under house arrest until 1966, when he was granted an exit permit
to 
leave South Africa. He and his family moved to Britain, where Brutus served
as a 
director of the World Campaign for the Release of Political Prisoners and
worked 
for the International Defense and Aid Fund. 
    Brutus moved to the United States in 1970 to take up a visiting professorship
at the University of Denver. Since 1971 he has taught at several universities,
includ- 
ing Northwestern University and, more recently, the University of Pittsburgh.
He 
has received numerous literary and humanitarian awards and accolades including
the Mbari Prize for Poetry (1963), and the First Annual Paul Robeson Award
for 
Excellence, Political Consciousness, and Integrity (1989). Brutus was inducted
into 
the National Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent by the Gwendolyn
Brooks 
Center at Chicago State University in 2004. Brutus, now eighty, remains a
fearless 
fighter against injustice and inequality-particularly world poverty, Third
World 
debt, and globalization. As a poet, he has published several volumes of poetry,
and his poems have been published in a wide range of journals, newspapers,
and 
anthologies. His latest collection is Remembering Soweto 1976 (Whirlwind
Press, 
2004), and another, Leafdrift (Whirlwind Press), is forthcoming. 
Bernth Lindfors 
Bernth Lindors is a Professor Emeritus of English and African Literatures
at the 
University of Texas at Austin. Lindfors is a literary scholar and critic,
editor, bibliog- 
rapher, and author. Born in northern Sweden, Lindfors and his family moved
to the 
United States, where he attended Oberlin College and then Harvard University
for 
a master's degree in teaching, and Northwestern University for his degree
in 
English. Lindlfors moved to East Africa where he taught English, history,
and geog- 
raphy. He accepted a faculty position at the University of Texas at Austin
in 1969 
and subsequently created and edited a journal, Research in African Literatures,
that continues to be one of the premier journals in its field. Lindfors has
written 
and edited several books on Anglophone African literature and has received
two 
honorary doctorates and multiple awards.