Out Of Africa: 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize Longlist Includes Two African Writers
The Griffin Poetry Prize has announced the longlist for its 2026 edition, with two writers of African descent in contention for the prize. Nigerian poet Gbenga Adesina and Ugandan writer Nick Makoha are among this year’s 10-person longlist, selected from 461 poetry books, including 34 translations from 19 languages, submitted by 219 publishers across 42 […]
Black News 
The Griffin Poetry Prize has announced the longlist for its 2026 edition, with two writers of African descent in contention for the prize.
Nigerian poet Gbenga Adesina and Ugandan writer Nick Makoha are among this year’s 10-person longlist, selected from 461 poetry books, including 34 translations from 19 languages, submitted by 219 publishers across 42 countries.
Adesina is the inaugural Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Black and Diasporic Poetry at the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University. He received his Master of Fine Arts from New York University, where he was mentored by Yusef Komunyakaa. He is the co-founder and editor of A Long House, a journal of diasporic art, thought, and literature. His work has earned multiple fellowships, and his poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Harvard Review, Guernica, Narrative, The Yale Review, The Best American Poetry, and The New York Times Magazine, among others.
Adesina has been longlisted for his debut collection Death Does Not End at the Sea, a defiant and reflective exploration of exile, migration, and spiritual odysseys. The collection follows figures on journeys shaped by history and memory: a son dreams of carrying his dead father across the sea; a young Black father travels across Paris, the south of France, Turkey, and Senegal in search of ancestral connection; and a group of migrants in the Mediterranean sing to stay afloat in a sequence that echoes the Middle Passage. In a lyrical voice that feels both contemporary and ancient, the book examines fragile citizenship, longing, grief, and the bond between the living and the dead.
Makoha is a London-based poet and playwright. His debut collection, Kingdom of Gravity, was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize and named a Guardian Book of the Year. His poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Wasafiri, Boston Review, and Callaloo. He is the founder of the Obsidian Foundation and the recipient of the 2021 Ivan Juritz Prize and the Poetry London Prize.
Makoha has been longlisted for his collection The New Carthaginians, in which Western canons of art, history, and philosophy are deconstructed and reimagined. Drawing on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘exploded’ collage technique, the book follows three central figures, the Poet, a Black Icarus, and a resurrected Basquiat, on a mythic journey. Together, they assemble a new symbolic language that challenges the othering of Black life and gestures toward a reimagined understanding of myth and identity.
The Griffin Poetry Prize is awarded annually for a first-edition poetry collection written in, or translated into, English by a living poet and or translator from any country. The prize aims to raise the profile of poets and poetry in Canada and internationally. The winner of the international Griffin Poetry Prize receives C$130,000, while the other shortlisted poets each receive C$10,000.
The 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize winner will be announced at the readings to be held at Koerner Hall in Toronto, Canada, on Wednesday 3 June 2026.
