2023 Evaristo Winners Announced!
The African Poetry Book Fund is thrilled to announce the winners of the Evaristo Prize for African Poetry (formerly the Brunel International Prize for African Poetry).
Judges Gabeba Baderoon, Tjawangwa Dema, and Mahtem Shiferraw have selected two winners for this year’s prize: Derek Ehiorobo (Lagos, Nigeria) for “And God Said,” Kyle Okeke (Texas, U.S./Nigeria) for “Butterflies.” Chosen from amongst five short-listed finalists, Ehiorobo and Okeke will each receive a prize of $750.
The judges also chose one honorable mention: .CHISARAOKWU.(California, U.S./Igbo) for her poems.
The judges had high praises for the work of all poets.
Of Ehiorobo’s work, they said: “In these poems is an unguarded tenderness wielded so delicately and resonantly that the speaker becomes a point of translation whom we sometimes even forget exists. This delicacy of touch courses through line after line and contains the grief–within, within.”
Regarding Okeke’s poems, the judges noted: “There is an exquisite sense of expansiveness and restraint in these poems. So much is carried here in language that is centered and succinct. Marked by images of astonishing beauty and power, ‘Butterflies’ crafts an intimate and undaunted poetic voice. This collection of ten poems is a profoundly moving poetic achievement.”
As for .CHISARAOKWU.’s work, the judges remarked: “There is so much knowing in these poems, so much beauty, and the mastery of language and imagery is almost uncanny. The narratives are interwoven into each other, braiding upon braiding, new splitting of the same stories, with writing that is tactile, evocative and beautifully sensorial.”
Kyle Okeke is a writer from Sugar Land, Texas, whose work appears or is forthcoming in Glass: a Journal of Poetry, Foglifter, and POETRY, among others. He is pursuing an MFA in creative writing at UT Austin’s New Writers Project.
Ehiorobo Derek is a writer, poet, and spoken word artist. His work has been published in Praxis, Poetry column-NND, Liquid Imaginations, the How to fall in love anthology published by Inkspired Nigeria, and the How to fall in love again anthology, also published by Inkspired Nigeria. You can find him on instagram @derekimagines, where he writes poetry for a small community of literary enthusiasts.
To read the winning poems, visit Kyle Okoke’s page and Ehiorobo Derek’s page.
The Evaristo Prize for African Poetry is an annual prize of USD $1,500 awarded to ten poems written by an African poet. Established first as the Brunel International African Poetry Prize (BIAPP) in 2012 by British writer Bernardine Evaristo, who founded and managed the prize for ten years, the Evaristo Prize was renamed in 2022 and is now administered by the African Poetry Book Fund.
President of the UK’s Royal Society of Literature and a celebrated writer, Bernardine Evaristo is an APBF Editorial Board Member; Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London; and the author of ten books of fiction, poetry, essays, drama, criticism, and journalism.
The Evaristo Prize for African Poetry accepts submissions from October 1st till November 1st of every year. To learn more about the prize, visit the APBF’s contests page.
To support the African Poetry Book Fund’s work in promoting and celebrating African poetry, you may make a donation via the Nebraska Foundation.