Judges praised the ‘imaginative capacity and technical flair’ of a collection that draws connections between Shakespeare’s hero and today’s immigrants Jamaican poet Jason Allen-Paisant has won this year’s TS Eliot prize for Self-Portrait As Othello, his collection exploring Black masculinity and immigrant identity. Allen-Paisant was announced as the winner of the £25,000 award during a ceremony at the Wallace Collection in London. “Self-Portrait As Othello is a book with large ambitions that are met with great imaginative capacity, freshness and technical flair,” said the judging panel, made up of the poets Paul Muldoon, Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul. The best…

Muyiwa Babayomi Alkebulan, mother, ancient canvas of our collective soul, Land where the dawn first smiles, gifting light to kings and queens, Our hands once held the wealth of soil, planting wisdom like seeds. Where the baobabs stand, proud and free, under skies vast and forgiving. Do you recall, Alkebulan, the first shadow that fell upon our land? A shroud not of night but of greed, then chains fell across our fields and rivers, Inch by inch, they sought to take our spirit, our gold, our very essence. Yet, from the depths, where our roots kiss the earth’s core, our…

Professor Adimora-Ezeigbo urged the judges to elevate literature as a catalyst for national development. With poetry in focus this year, the Nigeria Prize for Literature continues to celebrate and reward outstanding literary achievements, reaffirming its commitment to nurturing Nigeria's rich literary landscape.

Ada Limón 1976 – Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.                 Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feelsso mute it’s almost in another year. I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying. We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out       the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder. It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue       recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learnsome new constellations. And it’s true. We keep forgetting…