Nigerian emerges finalist in African Poetry Prize

A Nigerian poet, O-Jeremiah Agbaakin, is among 2020 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets finalists.

Agbaakin was selected for his manuscript, The Root of the Word Babble is Babel.

While the prize was won by a Zambian-born poet, Cheswayo Mphanza, for The Rinehart Frames, the other finalist was a Moroccan, El Habib Louai, for Rotten Wounds Embalmed with Tar.

Cheswayo Mphanza

The prize is judged every year by the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund, which includes Chris Abani, Gabeba Baderoon, Bernardine Evaristo, Aracelis Girmay, John Keene, Matthew Shenoda, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, and the director Kwame Dawes.

Founded in 2013, along with its parent organisation, the African Poetry Book Fund (APBF), and backed by the philanthropists Laura and Robert FX Sillerman, the $1,000 prize honours the finest first full-length poetry manuscript by an African and comes with a publication offer from the University of Nebraska Press.

Agbaakin was born in 1994 in Osun state. He is a Law graduate of University of Ibadan. His literary works have been published in Diode Poetry Journal, Temz Review, the Brooklyn Review, OBSIDIAN, Sierra Nevada Review and StepAway Magazine.

A finalist in the 2017 Korea-Nigeria Poetry Contest, he had previously been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Award.

He is the submissions editor for Dwarts Magazine and a poetry reader for PANK Magazine.