By
’Tunji Ajibade
The Nigerian multiple award-winning fiction writer and poet, Jekwu Anyaegbuna, has won this year’s Poetry London Prize. His entry “Unusual Inmates” was announced Saturday night by the organisers at a ceremony that held at the Southbank Centre in London.
Anyaegbuna on stage at the award night
On receiving the news of the award, an elated Anyaegbuna said, “I am delightfully shocked. This appears surreal. It feels unbelievable. I submitted my poem with all the pessimism I could summon up. I didn’t even give myself a chance to fantasize about winning. I only wanted to take part, just to participate and leave. I didn’t even imagine that my poem was a good one, let alone a prize-winning one.”
Speaking at the award night, he said, “Sometimes, I write some rubbish. And then someone tells me, ‘Oh, that your rubbish is actually some creative excellence.’ I thank Poetry London for validating my work, for honouring my creative weirdness. I would also like to thank the University of East Anglia for creating for me the most beautiful atmosphere that made it possible for me to write this poem.” Then he told the audience that the election that took place in Nigeria in February 2023 devastated him and gave birth to the poem.
Anyaegbuna, who lives in England, is a winner of many literary prizes. He won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa. He graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where he has also been a fully-funded researcher and an Associate Tutor in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing. He is a fiction fellow at the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation for Creative Writing in Bulgaria. He was shortlisted for the 2022 White Review Short Story Prize, and his writing has been published in Granta, The Massachusetts Review, Transition, and Prairie Schooner, among other publications.
The prize is awarded by Poetry London, a top-rated poetry journal funded by the Arts Council England. Poetry London’s artistic vision is based on the understanding that “the best poetry” includes the broadest variety of styles and subjects, and that the very best of that poetry often acts as an unacknowledged catalyst for change. Poetry London is committed to supporting, empowering, and uplifting racially and ethnically marginalized writers.
The final judge for this year’s submissions was poet Rachel Long, author of My Darling From The Lions. During the award night, the Reviews Editor of Poetry London, Isabelle Baafi, revealed that Jekwu’s winning poem was chosen from over four thousand poems, adding that it was a poem that kept them guessing. She described Anyaegbuna’s “Unusual Inmates” as “a poem for our times.”
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