By Iminza Keboge
Published March 10, 2019
A Nigerian has been named as winner of the 2019 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets.
Gbenga Adeoba‘s manuscript titled Exodus has won him the prize which comes with US$1000 and publication through University of Nebraska Press.
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According to Prairie Schooner literary quarterly of the University of Nebraska , Gbenga Adeoba has not only been published in publications such as Oxford Poetry, Prairie Schooner and Pleiades but was also shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize.
“I’m really honoured,” Adeoba said of his win. “I know the manuscript is in good hands.”
A Funeral Hymn in Falsetto, published in Salamander, gives one a taste of Adeoba’s poetry. The poem mourns the passing of a grandparent and manages to simultaneously capture how massive the passing of a loved one can feel while also encapsulating how, as time wears on, a death’s impact can feel fainter and fainter.
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We Need New Moses Or New Luther King by Emeka Nome who is also from Nigeria was named as a finalist for 2019 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets.
Meanwhile, The Careless Seamstress by Bristol (UK)-based spoken word poet Tjawangwa Dema who won the 2018 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets has been published and is available for US$17.95 per copy.
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The 96-page Careless Seamstress tackles issues related to gender, identity and labour.
While The Careless Seamstress is concerned with serious themes, Tjawangwa Dema of Botswana stresses she didn’t arrive at her concerns out of a sense that it is her duty to write about such things.
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“I don’t allow myself to feel or sit with the pressure to ‘deliver’ a message – I resist that kind of prescriptiveness with everything in me. The only duty (if that is even the word for it) I feel as a writer is towards story, craft and empathy, perhaps therein lies witness. I think your lived experience includes every book you’ve ever read or conversation you’ve ever overheard, it’s the sound of your grandmother’s voice and the silly pop song you can’t get out of your head. I think we can’t be too precious about what constitutes a story worth telling,” she says.
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