Gracia Mwamba and Feranmi Ariyo were named joint winners of the Evaristo Prize for African Poetry 2023 on Friday, June 16, 2023.
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 was given the new name of Evaristo Prize for African Poetry with a judging panel chaired by Gabeba Baderoon alongside Tjawangwa Dema (Botswana) and Tsitsi Jaji (Zimbabwe). The shortlist for the award was named on April 20 before the winners were made public on Friday. The winners for this cycle of the prize are;
- Congo, seen from the heavens, Gracia “Cianga” Mwamba (Congo/USA)
- He Reads a Cancer Booklet, Feranmi Ariyo (Nigeria)
The judges were impressed by the submissions the African Poetry Book Fund received in the contest’s first year, and they had high praise for the work of all the short-listed poets.
On Mwamba’s poems, the judges noted “an arresting economy and density of language, followed by an exhilarating formal range including prose, lyric, and an ear for the multiple directions in which a single word can gyrate. The first lines in Congo, seen from the heavens ask the striking question – does it matter who gazes?” To read Mwamba’s poems, please click here.
Of Ariyo’s work, they said: “These poems do not look away from the ‘incarnation of death wait[ing] eagerly’ in the hospital room and therefore the seeming capriciousness of individual life, unmasking of elemental relationships and uneven forms of knowing revealed by cancer. Yet their intimate view on loss also opens outward into worldedness.” To read his poems, please click here.
They each received US$750.
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