Dennis Vincent Brutus, Poems from Algiers

Craig McLuckie (Okanagan College)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 7.2.3.03: South Africa and other Southern Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1970

Places

Zimbabwe (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem collection

Resources

Poems from Algiers (1970, 1972) is a slim, but effective, 27 page pamphlet from the African and Afro-American Research Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. The pamphlet (Occasional Publications #2) contains nine poems and an authorial commentary in Brutus's handwriting. The poems are the ‘survivors' of a group written in Algiers, where Brutus was attending the Pan-African Cultural Festival. Only three of the nine poems (“And I am driftwood”, “In the sunlight” and “Only in the Casbah”) survive this publication to appear in A Simple Lust.

The poetry begins with Brutus's free verse meditation on exile and solitude, “And I am driftwood”. The poem opens with an enlarged sense of place/space �…

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860 words

Citation: McLuckie, Craig. "Poems from Algiers". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 April 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12230, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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