Robert Berold (1948), well known South African poet, is also highly respected for the constant help and encouragement he has given to so many aspirant poets. Through his dedicated editorship of the poetry journal, New Coin, from 1989 to 1999, Robert Berold has created an arena for many different poetic voices and styles to flourish in South Africa, publishing much of the groundbreaking new poetry being written in the 90’s. 

It All Begins: poems from post-liberation South Africa, published in 2002, is an anthology of poems first published in New Coin, edited by Robert Berold, and demonstrates the awesome capacity of a small magazine to discover and give exposure to gifted new poets. 

Apart from his three poetry publications, Berold’s poems have appeared in several South African anthologies. Denis Hirson wrote about his work: "his pared down naming of essential things around him, the physicality of the encounter between words and local environment, free of intellectual artifice, along with an increasing meditative simplicity, combine to give his voice its distinctive sound in South Africa today". Originally trained as an engineer and economist, Robert Berold makes his living as a writer and editor of technical and environmental books, and teaches creative writing and literary journalism part time at Rhodes University. He also runs a small poetry press, Deep South Books, with Cape Town writer/critic, Paul Wessels. Drive Out Hunger, his biography of the visionary Lesotho agriculturalist, J.J. Machobane, will be published later this year.

The Door to the River, Bateleur, 1984

The Fires of the Dead, Carrefour, 1989

Rain Across a Paper Field, Gecko Poetry, 1999

It All Begins: Poems from Post-Liberation South Africa, Gecko Poetry, University of Natal Press, 2002

Jaap Blonk (1953) is a self-taught composer, musician, voice performer and sound poet. Everyone has a cheek synthesizer, but hardly anyone knows how to play it - Blonk is an exception. A conversation with him is constantly interrupted by pinched vocal sounds with vibrato, inhaled vowels, crackled consonants and shrieking rubbing sounds escaping from the corners of this mouth. For over 15 years he has intensively practiced with his lips, tongue and larynx to produce a startling diversity of controlled sounds.

His unfinished studies in physics, mathematics and musicology mainly created a penchant for activities in a Dada vein, and in the late 70’s he took up the saxophone and started to compose music, subsequently discovering the power and flexibility of his voice. Blonk has since developed into a prolific writer/composer and specialist in the performance of sound poetry, supported by a powerful stage presence and an almost childlike freedom of improvisation and expression.

Besides working as a soloist he has collaborated with many musicians and ensembles in the field of contemporary and improvised music, e.g. Paul Lytton, Mats Gustafsson, Melvyn Poore and Paul Dutton. He performed in several compositions by the German composer Carola Bauckholt, including a piece for voice and orchestra. A solo voice piece was commissioned by the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2002. Blonk is the founder and leader of Splinks, a 15-piece orchestra playing his compositions, and BRAAXTAAL, an avant-garde rock trio with synthesizer and drums. He also has his own record label, Kontrans. His work for radio and television includes several commissioned radio plays. Blonk has engaged energetically in workshops, including work with children, in many different countries. A recent development is his involvement with electronics, creating works by sampling and processing the sound of his voice. In his search for the common ground between poetry and music, Jaap Blonk is always exploring new sounds and combinations of sound, without abandoning the semantics of language.

Songs from Heaven, Perdu (Amsterdam), 1993

Speechlos by BRAAXTAAL, Kontrans 244,1997

Six Sound Poems of Hugo Ball by baba-0emf, Kontrans 844, 1998

Vocalor, Staalplaat STCD 112, 1998

First Meetings with Fred Lonberg-Holm and Michael Zerand, UBZZ ZZ 76002, 1998

Consensus, Kontrans 1545, 1999

Avershuw, Kontrans 947, 2001

Come to Catch Your Voice, LopLop LLR 006, 2001

Dworr Buun by BRAAXTAAL, Kontrans 448, 2001

Bek, Staalplaat/Brombron 05, 2002

Hübsch, Van Bebber & Blonk, Kontrans 749, 2003

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Dennis Brutus (1924), poet, distinguished educator, and Freedom Fighter, was born in Zimbabwe of South African parents and educated in South Africa. Known as the "singing voice of the South African Liberation Movement", Brutus’s political campaigns led to his being banned from all political and social activity and his subsequent arrest and incarceration on Robben Island, where he spent time breaking stones with Nelson Mandela. He left South Africa in 1966 and made his home in England until 1983 when he won the right to stay in the United States as a political refugee.

Brutus’ first collection of poetry, Sirens, Knuckles and Boots, was published in Nigeria while he was in prison. Although Brutus’s work is protest poetry and records his experiences of misery and loneliness as a political prisoner, there is a maturity and restraint in his poems that prevent them from ever becoming self-pitying.

Currently living in the USA, he is a Professor of African Studies and African Literature, and is Chair of the Department of Black Community Education Research and Development at the University of Pittsburgh. He was formerly visiting professor at the Universities of Denver and Texas, and was Distinguished Visiting Humanist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has lectured worldwide as well as in South Africa, and was appointed Research Fellow at the University of Durban-Westville in 1997. Dennis Brutus was the recipient of the Langston Hughes Award in 1987 (the first non-African American to receive that award), and was honoured with the first Paul Robeson Award in 1989 for "artistic excellence, political consciousness and integrity".

The charismatic Dennis Brutus is an inspiring and highly respected speaker, in great demand by international audiences, and a dedicated activist with his current focus on the injustices of the IMF and World Bank policies in Third World countries.

Sirens, Knuckles and Boots, 1962

Letters to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison, 1968

Poems from Algiers, 1970

Thoughts Abroad, 1970

A Simple Lust, 1973

China Poems, 1975

Stubborn Hope, 1979

Strains, 1981

Salutes and Censures, 1984

Arts and Tributes, 1989

Still the Sirens, 1993

I remember rising one night

after midnight

and moving

through an impulse of loneliness

to try and find the starts.

And through the haze

the battens of fluorescents made

I saw pinpricks of white

I thought were stars.

Greatly daring

I thrust my arm through the bars

and easing the switch in the corridor

plunged my cell in darkness.

I scampered to the window

and saw the splashes of light

where the stars flowered.

But through my delight

thudded the anxious boots

and a warning barked

from the machine-gun post

on the catwalk.

And it is the brusque inquiry

and threat

that I remember of that night

rather than the stars.