Arrowsmith Press, in partnership with the Derek Walcott Estate and the Derek Walcott Festival, has announced the finalists for the 2026 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, which recognises a full-length book of poems by a living poet who is not a US citizen.
Among the finalists are two African poets:
- Tolu Oloruntoba, Unravel (McLelland & Stewart))
- Othuke Umukoro, Fenestration (TRP: The University Press of SHSU; Masobe Books)
Selected by American poet and translator Rosanna Warren, who is the sole judge for the 2026 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, Tolu Oloruntoba’s Unravel is a poetic exploration of the cyclical philosophy of dismantling and remaking. The collection was a finalist for the 2025 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry and the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and was named one of the Best Canadian Poetry Books of 2025 by CBC Books. It was also a Calgary Herald bestseller.
Othuke Umukoro, Fenestration excavates public and private history. The poems here bristle with striking clarity and immediacy while compellingly confronting subjects such as the transatlantic slave trade, familial memory, HIV, environmental perils, and more. What happened inside those slave forts in Ghana, Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle, where enslaved Africans were immured for weeks, sometimes months, before facing the horror of the Middle Passage? How does one carry the memory of his dead father? Fenestration, among other things, throbbing with an unflinching consciousness that splices history and memory, unfolds powerfully.
The Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry is given annually to a full-length book of poems by a living poet who is not a US citizen (green card holders welcome) published in the previous calendar year.
Congratulations, Tolu Oloruntoba and Othuke Umukoro!
