Keorapetse Kgositsile and Lesego Rampolokeng have writing and performance styles which manage to be strikingly different yet complimentary. I've never seen such an effective event contrasting these two very different South African poets.

Kgositsile, a poet, professor and winner of multiple awards who was exiled from his country for several years, is the South African Poet Laureate and was involved in the founding of several arts projects at home and abroad. Rampolokeng is a film maker, essayist and novelist. Both have been active in the anti-apartheid struggle.

'Every word I write brings the weight of my life', Kgositsile tells us. He reads us his poems written for a bassist who died onstage in Frankfurt, and the recent Haitian disaster. His performance style is pure pleasure, with deadly, emotional language and a wonderful sense of timing.

Rampolokeng reads with voracity. His language and performance style are assertive, fast, rhythmic and engaging. He seems to underestimate his Scottish (and international) audience a bit, checking our understanding when it isn't really necessary. He isn't revealing facts, after all, but perspective.

Rampolokeng's subject matter regards the brutality of war and racism in terms meant to jar the reader, while Kgositsile takes in a broader, more international view of humanity. Kgositsile's words are no less direct, but touch on the before and after of violence and are reflective rather than reactive. 'I'm from a country that kills Africans', Rampolokeng tells us, while Kgositsile gives us an idea of the way apartheid is absorbed by young people through a story of segregated buses and boxing clubs, and the loyalties which emerge under these conditions.

This isn't a negative criticism of Rampolokeng's work, which relies heavily on his rapid performance style and the speed at which the audience is meant to take in his vivid imagery. Both writers draw our attention to the damage and arrogance of European imperialism on Africa, the universal nature of violence and the contrasting opinions and experiences which can exist within a country.