David Evans - Return of a native

On the WGGB website, Guild member David Evans reports on going back to Durban for the Time Of The Writer Festival earlier this year.

In 1963 in the city of Durban the South African government halted my career as a writer by imposing a ban which forbade me any form of publication, performance or public speaking. A year later I was imprisoned for opposing apartheid, and five years after that house arrested on my release. Living in the UK since 1970, first as an exile then as a citizen, I’ve seen my poetry, short stories and a novel published and work for stage and television performed, but have remained unpublished in South Africa.

So it was an emotional and somewhat triumphal moment on an evening this March to be on a public platform in the city where I was banned – and to be reading a poem as part of a week-long writers’ festival.