Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali

Robin Peter Gaylard (University of Stellenbosch)

Ed. by Anna Hildegard Gagiano, University of Stellenbosch
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 7.2.3.03: South Africa and other Southern Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester)

Dates

Born 17 Jan 1940
Activity 1971-ongoing

Places

Born in South Africa
Active in South Africa; United Kingdom

Activities

Primary

Poet

Resources

Mtshali's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali burst onto the South African literary scene with the publication of

Sounds of a Cowhide Drum

in 1971. The book went into six impressions, sold over 13000 copies, and was published in London and New York in the following year. The success of Mtshali's collection of poetry helped pave the way for a new, more militant generation of black poets (Sepamla, Serote, Gwala) and to create an audience for their poetry. Their writing provoked an often heated debate among South African critics and academics over the criteria used to evaluate this poetry. A second collection of Mtshali's poetry,

Fireflames

was banned on publication in 1980. After working as an educationist in South Africa in the 1980s, Mtshali left for the United States in 1989 to further his career. He is…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2378 words

Citation: Gaylard, Robin Peter. "Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 August 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3237, accessed 23 April 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here