Muneera Pilgrim

It is no surprise that Muneera Pilgrim won the 2018 Ann Kaloski Naylor award for Adventurous Writing - for ‘adventurous’ is exactly the word that springs to mind when hearing her poetry. Founding member of Nana collective and Artist Associate with The English Touring Theatre, Pilgrim herself seems to embody the themes at the heart of her work; to bring together and to forge new pathways. 

Pilgrim’s writing often plays with the tension between modernity and tradition. When They Speak of Muslims provides a celebration of contemporary Muslim Britain, walking the fault line where urban British life and Islam mesh. It advocates for the right of young Muslims to be cheesy, to be messy, to be human, laughing in the face of the British middle-class desire to condescend. 

Kayo Chingonyi

Kayo Chingonyi was born in Zambia and moved to the UK at the age of six. A poet, producer, DJ, and critic, his talent was nurtured on The Complete Works mentoring scheme initiated by Bernardine Evaristo to foster equality and excellence in British poetry.

His first full-length collection, Kumukanda - 'the name given to the rites a young boy from the Luvale tribe must pass through before he is considered a man', was published by Chatto & Windus in 2017. It won the Dylan Thomas Prize, a Somerset Maugham Award, and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Prize. It was also shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize, the Roehampton Poetry Prize, the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize, and a Ted Hughes Award.

His second collection, A Blood Condition (Chatto & Windus), 'a hymn to the people and places that run in our blood', was published in 2021. It was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot, Forward, and Costa Poetry Prizes.

Malika Booker

We're delighted to announce that Malika Booker has now been added to the Poetry Archive, as part of The Obsidian Collection in collaboration with Obsidian Foundation.

Malika Booker is a much-loved figure in British poetry. Known for her dexterity in both the written and the spoken word, Malika is the author of ‘Breadfruit’ (Flipped Eye Publishing, 2007) and ‘Pepper Seed’ (Peepal Tree Press, 2013), which was longlisted for the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize and shortlisted for the 2014 Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. More recently, she has won the 2019 Cholmondeley Award and the 2020 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. As part of The Obsidian Collection two of Malika's poems, 'In Memory of Herbert Morris' and 'Nine Nights', have now been added to the Collection.

Momtaza Mehri

Momtaza Mehri is a Somali-British poet and essayist. She grew up in the Middle East and is currently based in London. She began writing poetry for publication in 2014. Her work has appeared in the likes of Granta, Artforum, The Guardian, BOMB Magazine, and The Poetry Review. She is the former Young People’s Laureate for London and columnist-in-residence at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Open Space, as well as a Frontier-Antioch Fellow at Antioch University. In 2018 she was the co-winner of the Brunel International African Poetry prize, and in 2019 she won the Manchester Writing Prize. Her latest pamphlet, Doing the Most with the Least, was published by Goldsmiths Press.

Yomi Sode

Yomi Sode is a greatly celebrated and vitally needed voice in the UK’s poetry scene. Born in Oyo State Nigeria, his entry into the world of storytelling came in the form of musicality, a quality easily witnessed in his approach to brilliantly paced and finely woven stories. It seems Sode has always been a poet as much into entertaining, with the relentless rhythms of his writing, as he is into educating, with poems that stare directly into societal failings with lyrical ease. Sode has performed his poetry widely including opening for Saul Williams and The Last Poets, appearances at Yahoo! Wireless Festival, Latitude, Lovebox, Olympic Village, Sadler’s Wells Theatre and working with Channel 4 and BBC Radio 1Xtra. His commissioned work includes The Mayor’s Office, BBC World Service/BBC Africa to name a few. Beyond this, his ability to gather and cultivate space for storytelling manifested in the form of BoxedIN, a free and lively poetry night at Shoreditch that Sode founded in 2012.