Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali's volume of poetry Sounds of a Cowhide Drum, published in 1971, gave the original impetus to what became known as "New Black Poetry," or Soweto poetry, during the 1970s in South Africa. It was a poetry closely aligned with the rise of the "Black Consciousness" movements in the late 1960s, and it reflected the temper of protest and resistance that was given expression in the Soweto uprising on 16 June 1976. Mtshali's work also helped engender a climate of radical revision in thought about South African literature in the local university English departments, as the forthright, sometimes crude, but always powerful nature of his poetry challenged accepted Western notions of good taste. His first collection was, in 1971, awarded the Olive Schreiner Prize for poetry by the English Academy of Southern Africa. Hailed in the South African press as the first black voice in Southern African English poetry since...