COLLECTIBLE BOOKS: Boyhood among ox wagons, ruins and ancient gold workings
SA poet and satirist Roy Campbell reminisces about the extended holidays he spent with relatives in former Rhodesia in the early 20th century
It is reported that Campbell was viewed by TS Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Edith Sitwell as one of the best poets of the period between the two world wars. He was recognised as SA’s most eminent poet, and wrote masterpieces such as Wayzgoose, Adamastor, The Georgiad and The Flaming Terrapin, which brought him instant acclaim. Yet he describes his autobiography, Broken Record, as an account of “an entirely useless and selfish career”, and says he considers his only use as an artist was to have added “a few solar colours to contemporary verse”. During the Spanish civil war he supported Francisco Franco’s nationalists, and this support was said to be the reason for his being blacklisted from modern poetry anthologies. With poet William Plomer he launched the literary magazine Voorslag. Campbell says in his book that his memory and imagination worked as one, and that in recalling them they became more elegant, for he was not one who would wish to bore anyone with facts. A good section of the...
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