Isabelle Baafi has been named the winner of the 2025 Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection for her poetry collection, Chaotic Good, published by Faber.
Framed by the story of escape from a toxic marriage, Chaotic Good focuses on the incremental ways in which power accumulates, shifts and is relinquished within both home and community.
A London-born poet of Jamaican and South African heritage, she previously authored Ripe, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and her work has appeared in Poetry Review, The London Magazine, and Magma. She has also been shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize.
Speaking about her process, Baafi said:
“During the creation of this book, there were times where articulating certain ideas was difficult. I was wracked with feelings of deep ambivalence, and so translating thoughts and feelings into words seemed almost impossible. At such times, what helped was tapping into my subconscious: writing from dreams and writing first thing in the morning, before my sense of time and place and logic had fully formed.”
The Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection recognises an outstanding piece each year and is made possible with support from the Jerwood Foundation.
Congratulations, Isabelle Baafi!
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
