A collection of poems from this time were published as a book titled Sauti ya Dhiki[a] (1973), which was awarded the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature.
Abdilatif Abdalla was born in Mombasa, Kenya, in 1946, where he was brought up by his grandfather Ahmad Basheikh bin Hussein.
He began his political involvement after working for the Mombasa City Council as an assistant accountant, writing the pamphlet Kenya Twendapi?
It was while imprisoned that he wrote the poems that would be collected in the 1973 work Sauti ya Dhiki, whose title translates to "Voice of Agony".
This was in response to an attempt by Daniel arap Moi's government to bribe Abdalla into no longer working with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.