The Evaristo Prize for African Poetry 2025 shortlist was announced on Wednesday, April 30, 2025.
The Brunel International African Poetry Prize, founded by Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo, was started in 2012 to revitalise African poetry and encourage a new generation of poets to get an international platform. Previous winners have been Warsan Shire (2013), Liyou Libsekal (2014), Safia Elhillo and Nick Makoha (2015), Gbenga Adesina and Chekwube O. Danladi (2016), Romeo Oriogun (2017), Momtaza Mehri, Theresa Lola, and Hiwot Adilow (2018), Nadra Mabrouk and Jamila Osman (2019), Rabha Ashry (2020), and Othuke Umukoro (2021).
In 2023, the prize, now administered by the African Poetry Book Fund, was renamed the Evaristo Prize for African Poetry after its founder. The first winners with the identity were Gracia Mwamba and Feranmi followed in 2024 by the joint winners Ehiorobo Derek and Kyle Okeke.
The 2025 jury comprises poet Tjawangwa Dema, who chaired alongside poet and academic Tsitsi Jaji, and poet and visual artist Mahtem Shiferraw. From the submissions received during the reading period, the panel announced the shortlist for 2025.
The jury said, “one can begin to discern the emergence of clear strands of distinctive formal and thematic innovation and one can begin to describe a contemporary African Anglophone poetics…. As we see it, there is no, nor should there be, a formula for a prize-winning poem, or at least none that we sought from the outset. Instead, the poems revealed themselves reading by reading. With each poem inviting us to assess it against its own artistic ambition.”
The shortlistees are;
- Lord, How Many Times Shall I Forgive My Brother, Jeremy Karn (Liberia)
- All Those Losses, Prosper Ifeanyi (Nigeria)
- A Dying Man’s Wish and Other Poems, Akumbu Uche (Nigeria)
- Song, Ameen Animashaun (Nigeria)
- Of Memory and Forgetting, Chiwenite Onyekwelu (Nigeria)
The winner, who receives the US$1,500 cash prize, will be announced in May 2025.
Leave a Reply