The African Poetry Book Fund (APBF) has announced Ameen Animashaun as the winner of the 2025 Evaristo Prize for African Poetry for his entry titled Song.
Selected from a shortlist of five finalists, Animashaun will receive a $1,500 award.
This year’s judging panel chaired by Tjawangwa Dema with the help of Tsitsi Jaji, and Mahtem Shiferraw commended Song saying:
“[it is] quite haunting in its illusiveness, and it really trusts language to do all the work. There is so much control over the line here, and expansiveness in thought. Most of all, there is clarity in each poem…This is a poet happy to throw themselves at language and encounter the not always linear, the abstract and so on without losing sight of the poet’s duty to clarity.”
The Evaristo Prize for African Poetry formerly known as the Brunel International African Poetry Prize is awarded annually to ten original poems by an African poet. Originally established in 2012 by Booker Prize-winning writer Bernardine Evaristo, the prize was renamed in her honor in 2022 and is now administered by the African Poetry Book Fund.
Ameen Animashaun is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poets.org, Rattle Magazine, Salamander, Lolwe, Foglifter, Vast Chasm, and elsewhere. An MFA candidate at Washington University in St. Louis, he is the 2024 recipient of the Starshine and Clay Fellowship and winner of the Academy of American Poets A. E. Claeyssens, Jr. Poetry Prize. His writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and his full-length manuscript was a finalist for the 2024 Sillerman First Book Prize. Additionally, his chapbook, Calling a Spade, was a finalist for the 2024 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. He is an Oddball; a butterfly.
To read Ameen Animashaun’s winning poems and learn more about the prize, visit the African Poetry Book Fund website.
Congratulations, Ameen Animashaun!
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
