A picture of Meersman in his book launching event: picture from fromaruralpointofview.wordpress.com
Brent Meersman was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1967. He is a writer, author of many books, a political novelist, a reviewer, a journalist,and a traveller. Meersman has already visited more than 75 countries. He has written reviews about food, literature, arts, and travel. In 1989 he was a freelance press photographer; it was his first job. He mostly worked for the Grocotts Mail in Grahamstown. In 2005 that is when he started to write about food, that’s when people started to text and email him, some would ask him the period he has been writing for Mail and Guardian. One can say that Meersman is very much experienced when it comes to writing reviews.
picture of Brent Meersman: picture from his twitter.
He had written a good review named “Bitten by the food bug.” On 2013 September 20. In this blog, he wrote about the number of reviews he has already done, he said he reviewed over 200 shows as the theatre critic for the Mail &Guardian. He talked about the way he brings life to what he just sees with his own eyes, and makes people enjoy reading his writings. It won’t hurt to learn from his past reviews, people can pick one or more things about writing good reviews.
It is in this piece where he illustrated how he started writing about food, he also stated how waitresses used to recognise him in the restaurants, this symbolises that he had many followers or people who read his reviews because he also said that others also started to text and email him. He did well, he let his readers get his point of view when it comes to food and his analyses and criticism.
Even though he did a good job in this review, some things are bad. my critical constructive criticism about this piece is that the piece was too long, and he was not talking about food only, he also mentioned other reviews he has done and how he was recognised in restaurants, he was running away from the point. Yes, he is agood reviewer but, in this piece, he failed to let people know what he was talking about immediately. As a journalist, he should have known that important things come first, because some people may end up losing interest in the piece, without getting the point, the main point of reviewing is to let people know about an important thing, even though one can use her/ his own opinion.
The other bad thing about this review was trying to make jokes that are not funny at all, Meersman also criticise the way Africans cook their food, what he did is the same as comparing African cultures and western, how can those things be compared? He also apologised for the mistake he did on April fool’s day, he should have written the apologising piece, in this one he was supposed to talk about food.
On 04 July 2015, he published another review named “Rethinking the national Arts festival.” In this review, he was talking about the arts festival that takes place in Grahamstown. He researched the situation in Grahamstown, this was a very interesting piece, he went straight to the point, he stated how the festival helped the people from Grahamstown to get some jobs during that time, some would also be able to get money and food.
In this piece he wrote many important things that needed to be entertained by the leaders of South Africa, he even stated the percentage of unemployed people in Grahamstown where the arts festival was held. He also stated the reduction of age 5 to 24 pupils’ percentage, from 73.5% to 61.5%, which is something important.
It is still in this piece where he won my attention fully, I wanted to read more about the way people in Grahamstown are surviving. A very good job of Meersman, letting people know about the use of buckets toilets, open sewage, water problem, and beggars in the street. “It would be foolish not to draw attention when there are 500 journalists in town,” said Meersman. Yes, he was telling the truth those journalists should have taken the matter to society long ago, so people from Grahamstown can get help. When I analyse this piece, it is a good piece that deserves to be given to journalist students, so they can know or learn from this piece.
Meersman wrote both pieces very well, everyone may be expecting that from him, because he is an experienced writer, but the first piece was not that good, he could have done better than he did, but I liked the way he wrote the second one, even the title was interesting, one can recommend others to read it.