Skip to main content

The Brunel Prize for African Poetry(2017)







Hello Poets!

The Brunel Prize for African Poetry (2017) is now open for entries!

Prize: £3000

Deadline: December 1st, 2016

Requirements: It is open to poets who were born in Africa, or whose parents are African, or who are citizens of any African country. The poems may be published or unpublished. Poets who have self-published poetry books, chapbooks or pamphlets are allowed to submit. However poets who have already had a full-length book of poems published are not eligible. Only poems written in English will be accepted. Each entrant must submit 10 poems. No poem should exceed 40 lines.

Submit your poems to BUAPP@brunel.ac.uk in a single word document attachment with a cover page that contains:
  • Entrants' name
  • Entrants' nationality
  • Country of birth
  • Full address
  • Personal email address
  • Telephone number

The shortlist will be announced March 6th 2017. The winner would be announced on May 2nd 2017

Past winners of this prize are Warsan Shire in 2013, Chekwube O Danladi and Gbenga Adesina in 2016. The judges this year include Bernadine Evaristo, Creative Writing Professor at Brunel University, Chris Abani, Kwame Dawes, Safia Elhillo(2015 winner), and Patricia Wesley.

The Brunel Prize, started in 2012 by Bernadine Evaristo is sponsored by Brunel University, London, and Commonwealth Writers

Click for more details

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Introducing My Friend to Pomegranates

It was twenty-nine degrees Celsius  one night in the middle of August. My big fan,  the only reason why I’d been able to avoid buying an AC throughout that unbearably hot summer,   was blasting at its second-to-highest  setting.    I was sprawled  on my bed, watching Trevor Noah videos and ignoring my cramps, as well as my prior plans of going to bed at least a couple of hours before midnight that night. My friend, Grace knocked on the door. “Come in!” I answered. She opened the door slightly, holding a up a small pomegranate. ‘How do you eat this?’ We had gone grocery shopping together the previous weekend, and I'd spotted some pomegranates and picked up a few. ‘You have to try this!’, I'd excitedly told Grace, who had never had pomegranates before. I had only started eating them several months ago myself, and I had found them a more than suitable dietary companion in the cold winter months. I stood up and went to the door. ‘I’ll help you cut it.’ I took the fruit and we walke

The Taste Of Cardamom Chai

Earlier in my adult life, I met a woman in her late thirties or early forties- I’ll call her Stella. I’d been looking for a cheap room for rent, being a post grad student on the tail end of my program, having recently moved out of a relatives home in search of a different living situation. I had found the listing online- the room looked pleasing enough; furnished, clean, well lit. Stella and I got along well on our first meeting. She seemed chill- too chill, like she really didn’t care if I took the place, but I could sense a slight hopefulness beneath it. She told me about the person who used to live there, how they kept on bringing kids over- kids who would just ignore Stella in the hallway. ‘How rude!’ I had exclaimed in agreement. Eventually I moved in. It was my first time living ‘on my own’ since I moved to the country, and although it was January and the temperatures were frigid, I was set afire with the excitement of independence. There were three rooms in the house- one belong

A Chin-Chin Expedition

In the second week of December 2022, I started to crave chin-chin.   Like any other craving, I waited for it to pass. By the third week the craving was so strong that I considered making them myself.  It was quite odd, as chin-chin was never my favourite snack growing up. Give me overripe plantain chips- soft, dark, and spicy. I decided to go hunting for the snack one day during my lunch break from my remote job. The easy way would have been to drive to the African stores I was familiar with and purchase a jar of chin chin (which I was guaranteed to find) but I’d   just moved to a different quadrant of the city and I didn’t want to spend a huge portion of my work break time driving a long distance to search for, of all things, chin chin. After perusing Google maps, I found a couple of nearby african food stores to check. Hunching my shoulders against the bitter cold, I got into my preheated Hyundai and drove 4 minutes to one store, singing along with Sinatra as he crooned,   ‘Love-ly,