Njoku Nonso, a Nigerian Igbo-born poet, has been revealed as a winner of the New Writers Poetry Competition 2024 for his winning poem, “Surveillance from a High-Functioning Homo Proteus At Eagle Square, Circa Redacted” with a reward worth €1000 in cash prize!
Speaking about the poem, the head judge, Jordan Hamel, in his words describes:
“Wow! This poem hit me like a runaway cement truck. It’s not easy to live up to a title like that, but this poem pulls it off and then some. ‘Surveillance…’ is ambitious in its scope and influence. It balances elegance and filth of human experience with ease, ‘White silk bed sheet and pillowcases stained of lantern oil and cum’. This poem reanimates and reignites various histories, putting them in conversation and conflict with each other to light a path forward toward oblivion. It asks a lot of readers, metaphorically and literally, ‘What other ruin resides in the occupation of time?’ I jumped up and down and screamed ‘yes!’ with every line upon first reading and this poem’s power has only grown every time I have returned. It will grab you, shake you and refuse to let you go. I’m honoured to award this poem first place.”
Much of Njoku Nonso‘s work explores the concept of self as a unit of language, identity, grief, familyhood, dreamscapes, and otherness. A recipient of the 2022 Unserious Collective Fellowship, he won the Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest, the Emeka Anuforo Prize for Best Literary Artiste of the Year from The Muse Journal of the University of Nigeria, and the NgEducators International Model United Nations Conference Poetry Competition for Outstanding Indigenous Artists. He has been a finalist for the Open Drawer Poetry Contest, the Lumiere Review Inaugural Writing Contest, and the Stubborn Writers Contest. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Boston Review, Arkansas International, Chestnut Review, Momento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry, and elsewhere.
For more information on the Prize, visit the official website of the New Writers Poetry Competition.
Congratulations Nonso!
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
