Don Maclennan
South African poet and academic

Don Maclennan

The basics
Quick facts
Intro
South African poet and academic
Gender:
Male
Is:
Work field:
Birth:
9 December 1929
Death:
9 February 2009
The details
Biography

Donald Alasdair Calum Maclennan (9 December 1929 – 9 February 2009) was a South African poet, critic, playwright and English professor.
He published a number of plays, short stories, collections of poems and scholarly works.
Born on 9 December 1929, in London, England, Maclennan came to South Africa as a child in 1938. He was educated at Witwatersrand University and Edinburgh University.
Maclennan's academic career included lecturing at Wits University and the University of Cape Town. He taught in both South Africa and the United States. He began teaching at Rhodes University in 1966, teaching English there for more than 40 years, although he officially retired in 1994. In later years, he continued to teach at the university, giving weekly seminars for another decade.
In his final years, he self-published a number of works of poetry. In his last decade, Maclennan had motor-neuron disease. He suffered a stroke in January 2009, although his mind was not affected by it. He died 9 February 2009, in Port Elizabeth.