Arrowsmith Press, in partnership with The Derek Walcott Festival in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, and the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, unveil Nigerian poet and essayist, Romeo Oriogun as one of the shortlisted authors for the 2024 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. He made the list with his poetry book, The Gathering of Bastards published by the University of Nebraska Press.
On publication, the University of Nebraska Press said:
“The Gathering of Bastards chronicles the movement of migrants as they navigate borders both internal and external. At the heart of these poems of vulnerability and sharp intelligence, the poet himself is the perpetual migrant embarked on forced journeys that take him across nations in West and North Africa, through Europe, and through American cities as he navigates the challenges of living through terror and loss and wrestles with the meaning of home”.
Oluwasegun Romeo Oriogun is a Nigerian poet and essayist. He is the author of The Gathering of Bastards (2023) and Sacrament of Bodies (2020), as well as three chapbooks. He won the 2017 Brunel University African Poetry Prize and the 2022 Nigeria Prize for Literature for his collection Nomad, and was a finalist for the Future Awards African Prize for Literature and the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry.
Romeo has received fellowships and support from Ebedi International Writers Residency, Harvard University‘s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Oregon Institute for Creative Research, and the IIE- Artist Protection Fund. His poems have appeared in Poetry Foundation, Harvard Review, American Poetry Review, Narrative Magazine and elsewhere. Romeo received his MFA in creative writing from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 2020.
Sponsored by Arrowsmith Press, together with the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and The Derek Walcott Festival in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry Prize is awarded annually to a full-length book of poems published in the previous calendar year by a living poet who is not a U.S. citizen. The winners receive a $1000 prize and an opportunity to read in Boston.
For more information on the shortlisted authors and their books of the Derek Walcott Poetry Prize, kindly click here.
Congratulations, Romeo!
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
