Walibora, Ken Waliaula2020-04-202020-04-202009Vol. 40, No. 3 (Fall, 2009), pp. 129-148https://www.jstor.org/stable/40468141https://www.jstor.org/stable/40468141?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contentshttp://erepository.kibu.ac.ke/handle/123456789/1887This article is a study of the prison poetry of Abdilatif Abdalla, one of the most talented twentieth-century Swahili poets. Abdalla penned his col lection of poems Sauti ya Dhiki while serving a prison term for sedition during the Jomo Kenyatta regime in postindependence Kenya. Prison as a site for writing had tremendous influence on the form and content of his poetical productions. In this regard I suggest that, for the most part, the terribly unpleasant prison conditions that the poet experienced, enabled, and enhanced the occurrence in his poetry of a psychic or philosophical journey, which may or may not have been therapeutic, and the articula tion of a whole range of 'Voices/' I undertake a close reading of Sauti ya Dhiki, exploring the symbolic journey and the polyphony that characterizes Abdalla's reaction to his incarceration by what Achille Mbembe would call the "postcolonial potentateenAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United Stateshttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/Other