The poems in Mzwandile Matiwana's first book cover a range of subjects, including love, prison, poverty, and religion. Mzwandile Matiwana's poems are deeply felt lyrics, displaying surprising shifts of tone. Many of them were written from prison. They cover a range of experience - love, prison life, poverty, religious feeling - with rawness and delicacy.

Mzwandile Matiwana was born in 1967 in Port Elizabeth, and writes in both English and Xhosa. His poems have been published in Kotaz, New Coin, Timbila, Botsotso, Fidelities, donga, southernrain, Carapace and Sweet. He is a member of the UWA Writers Group in New Brighton and has run creative workshops with children at the St. Christophers Street Children Shelter and Ethembeni Enrichment Center.