Drawn from a shortlist of six, Feranmi Ariyo (Nigeria) and Gracia “Cianga” Mwamba (Congo/USA) have been announced winners of the inaugural Bernadine Evaristo Prize for Poetry. Formerly known as Brunel International African Poetry Prize, it was first founded by British writer Bernardine Evaristo who managed the prize for ten years. The prize sought to “encourage a new generation of poets who might one day become an international presence.” Previous winners like Safia Elhillo, Gbenga Adesina and Romeo Oriogun have become global sensations. Renamed, and managed by African Poetry Book Fund presently, the legacy of the prize continues.
This year’s shortlist did show promise. The judging panel, which included Gabeba Baderoon (Chair), Tjawangwa Dema, and Tsitsi Jaji, described them as “illuminating”. “Showing an impressive range and scale,” they write, “the manuscripts encompassed both rich verse narratives and tautly minimalist lines, homages to other poets and adept formal experimentation.”
They further praised the winning works distinctly.
Of Ariyo’s He Reads a Cancer Booklet, they remarked: “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.”
In the same vein, they note of Gracia “Cianga” Mwamba’s Congo, seen from the heavens: “…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?”
As winners, both poets will receive a prize of $750.
Feranmi Ariyo is a storyteller from Nigeria. He won the inaugural Edition of the Punocracy Prize for Satire in 2019 and was selected as a fellow for the Unserious Collective Fellowship in 2022. His work has been featured on African Writer, Kalahari Review, and Rattle‘s Poetry Podcast, amongst others. His chapbook, I Watch you Disappear is forthcoming in KUMI: New-Generation African Poets Chapbooks Boxset.
Gracia “Cianga” Mwamba is a Congolese artist based in California, by way of South Africa. A recipient of the Cave Canem + EcoTheo’s Starshine & Clay Fellowship, Gracia creates interdisciplinary work that seeks to decolonize and disrupt language. They are currently an MFA candidate and have received residency and fellowship support from UC Berkeley’s Arts & Research Center, Brooklyn Poets, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Foglifter Journal, Rappahannock Review, EcoTheo Review and elsewhere.
Click here to read the official announcement, and here to read their winning poems.
Congratulations to both of them!
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