Delius, Anthony
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1916-1989) South African poet (see Poetry) and author who eventually moved, after much political pressure because of his anti-apartheid views, to the UK, remaining there from 1967. His Satire on South African Politics and apartheid, The Last Division (1959), sends a 1980s Union Parliament to a Hell and Devil closely resembling those in Wyndham Lewis's The Childermass (1928), where they re-create, under their Premier's inspiration, the social system they left behind. The swingeing satirical power of this book-length poem is remarkable. Its views on South Africa's future contrast markedly with those expressed by Garry Allighan and are comparable with those of Arthur Keppel-Jones, though sharper. Less interestingly, The Day Natal Took Off: A Satire (1963) depicts that state's secession from South Africa. A late poem, Black South Easter (1965 chap), is a mythopoeic fantasia, a Matter of Africa quasi-narrative peopled with admonishing ghosts (see Fantastika). [JC]
Anthony Ronald St Martin Delius
born Simonstown, South Africa: 11 June 1916
died Chichester, Sussex: September 1989
works (selected)
- The Last Division (Cape Town, South Africa: Human and Roussea, 1959) [poem: chap: hb/nonpictorial]
- The Day Natal Took Off: A Satire (Cape Town, South Africa: Insight, 1963) [pb/]
- Black South Easter (Grahamstown, South Africa: S A Poetry Society, 1965) [poem: chap: pb/]
links
previous versions of this entry