The Griffin Poetry Prize has announced its 2026 longlist, and among the selected writers are two African poets:
- Gbenga Adesina for Death Does Not End at the Sea (University of Nebraska Press)
- Nick Makoha for The New Carthaginians, Allen Lane (Penguin Books)
Selected by judges Andrea Cote, Luke Hathaway, and Major Jackson, this year’s longlist was drawn from 461 submissions by 219 publishers across 42 countries, including several translated works. The prize remains one of the most significant international awards for a single book of poetry, with the winner set to receive $130,000.
Gbenga Adesina is longlisted for Death Does Not End at the Sea (University of Nebraska Press, 2025), a collection that explores exile, migration, and spiritual journeys through figures shaped by history and displacement, including sequences evoking the Middle Passage and ancestral memory. A Nigerian poet and essayist, Gbenga has been longlisted for the National Book Award and PEN/Voelcker Award, and is a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Black Global and Diasporic Poetry at James Madison University. His work appears in The Paris Review, Harvard Review, and The Best American Poetry.
Nick Makoha’s The New Carthaginians reflects on exile, identity, and historical rupture, inspired by the 1976 Entebbe crisis that forced him into exile. An Ugandan poet based in London, Makoha’s debut collection, Kingdom of Gravity (2017), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize and named one of The Guardian’s Best Books of the Year. He has received multiple fellowships, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and his work has been widely recognized with prizes including the Poetry London Prize and the Brunel African Poetry Prize.
The International Griffin Poetry Prize winner will be announced at the Readings at Koerner Hall on Wednesday, June 3, and will receive $130,000, with the shortlist to be announced on April 22. The other shortlisted finalists will each receive $10,000.
To learn more about the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize, click here.
Congratulations, Gbenga Adesina and Nick Makoha!
