SOURCE: An interview with Dennis Brutus, in Cultural Events in Africa, No. 26, January, 1967, pp. I-III.

In the following interview, Brutus discusses with Pieterse some of the themes and techniques of his poetry, as well as his principal influences.

[Pieterse]: Dennis, one notices in poems of yours that fairly frequently there are opposites, for instance in the third line of the introductory poem from your collection; Sirens, Knuckles, and Boots:

 A troubadour, I traverse all my land
exploring all her wide flung parts with zest
probing in motion sweeter far than rest
her secret thickets with an amorous hand:
and I have laughed disdaining those who banned
enquiry and movement, delighting in the test
of wills when doomed by Saracened arrest,
choosing, like unarmed thumb, simply to stand.
Thus quixoting till a cast-off of my land,
I sing and fare, person to loved one pressed
braced for this pressure...