Ghanaian poet and creative practitioner Gabriel Awuah Mainoo has been named the winner of the 2025–2026 Diann Blakely Emerging Poet Prize, awarded by the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia.
Mainoo received the honor for his poem, A Pathogenesis of the First Slave Ship, selected by poet Karla Kelsey, who served as judge for this year’s prize. The award recognizes outstanding emerging voices in poetry and is named in honor of the late American poet Diann Blakely.
In her official citation, Kelsey wrote:
“This poem bravely and hauntingly explores the condition of history that is now impossible to be known. The poem reveals that this impossibility does not mean that the event and its legacy are erased, but rather that some legacies require the sense-based imagery of poetry and poetry’s musicality to be registered and to circulate. Both deeply woven and disjunctive, this work responds to a necessity of a higher order.”
As part of the award, Mainoo will receive formal recognition from the university, and his winning poem will be published in the institution’s Blakely Archive, making it accessible to a wider global audience.
A Ghanaian creative practitioner, Gabriel Awuah Mainoo, has received fellowships from the Hong Kong Baptist University, Aarhus Literature Center in Denmark, the Library of Africa, the African Diaspora, Wintertuin Curacao, and others.
He is a grant recipient of the Danish Art Foundation through the South Gate Creative Writing School. Mainoo is the author of Lyrical Textiles (Illuminated Press, U.S.), We are Moulting Birds (Light Factory Publication, Canada), and a co-author of Hvor End Havet Skyller Dig Op (Forlaget Silkerfyret, Denmark).
His awards include the Africa Haiku Prize, the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora chapbook prize, the Singapore Poetry Prize, the 6th Ghana Association of Writers Literary Awards, the Samira Bawumia Literature Prize, the 1st Wanjohi Prize for African Poetry, and others.
He edits poetry for The Journal of African Youth Literature. His craft can be found in The London Reader, The New Orleans Review, Fiyah Magazine, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Fire, Wales Haiku Journal, The Woodward Review, and others. Mainoo was a headline poet at the Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival in England (2024) under the auspices of Bath Spa University, Ashesi University, and the Arts Council of England.
Congratulations, Gabriel Awuah Mainoo!
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