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The African Poetry Fook Fund has announced Nigerian poet, Michael Imossan as the 2024 winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry. Imossan won the prize for his poetry collection, “All That Refuses to Die,” and will receive a cash award of $1000 USD and publication of his manuscript.
Michael Imossan
The judging panel for the Sillerman Prize consists of Chris Abani, Gabeba Baderoon, Aracelis Girmay, John Keene, Matthew Shenoda, Mahtem Shiferraw, and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, with Kwame Dawes, Director of the African Poetry Book Fund and the Schooner’s Editor-in-Chief.
Professor Gabeba Baderoon writes that the manuscript possesses an “exquisite language, piercingly memorable lines [are]elegiac but with an insistence on beauty and love.”
The judges named two other manuscripts, “Adam Vomited the Apple” by Animashaun Ameen and “Ara’Luebo” by Kanyinsola Olorunnisola, as finalists.
Imossan’s win follows that of Abu Bakr Sadiq “Leaked Footages,” 2023; Tares Oburumu “origins of the syma species”, 2022; –the first time three Nigerian poets will win the award consecutively–and the 12th poet to win the annual book award.
Michael Imossan is an Ibibio poet from Nigeria. He is the author of the award-winning chapbook “For the Love of Country and Memory” (Poetrycolumnnd, 2022) and the pamphlet “A Prelude to Caving”(Konyashamsrumi, 2023). His work has appeared on the Lumiere Review and elsewhere.
The 2025 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets will be open September 15th through December 1st to submissions of manuscripts by African poets who have not yet published a full-length collection. Apply here.
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