Raymond Antrobus to judge new Barjeel Poetry Prize.

Jamaican-British poet Raymond Antrobus was announced as one of the judges of the new Barjeel Poetry Prize on August 2, 2020.

Barjeel Art Foundation is an independent initiative established to manage, preserve and exhibit an extensive collection of Modern and Contemporary Arab Art based in the United Arab Emirates. It has launched the first-ever Barjeel Poetry Prize, an international competition that invites poets around the world to respond to twenty works of Arab art from the 20th century. Poetry and art have a long history of mutual inspiration; the Barjeel Poetry Prize aims to encourage fresh engagement with Arab paintings from the Barjeel collection and to celebrate Arab art in its myriad forms by inviting poets to respond to it.

Selecting the winners for the prize will be a panel of Naomi Shihab Nye, Hala Alyan, Raymond Antrobus, Tishani Doshi, Asmaa’ Azaizah, and Golan Haji. Raymond Antrobus, born to an English mother and Jamaican father and raised in London, UK, is the author of The Perseverance. In 2019 he was a recipient of the Ted Hughes Award and won the Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award, and became the first poet to be awarded the Rathbone Folio Prize.

The prize is open to poets worldwide in six categories in English and Arabic from August 15 through September 30, 2020. Winners will be announced in the first week of December 2020.

For more information about entering the prize, please click here.