Ameen Animashaun Wins the 2025 Evaristo Prize
The African Poetry Book Fund is thrilled to announce the winner of the Evaristo Prize for African Poetry (formerly the Brunel International Prize for African Poetry).
Judges Tjawangwa Dema (Chair), Tsitsi Jaji, and Mahtem Shiferraw have selected one winner for this year’s prize: Ameen Animashaun (Nigeria) for “Song”. Chosen from amongst five short-listed finalists, Animashaun will receive a prize of $1,500.
Of Animashaun’s work, the judges said: “[it is] quite haunting in its illusiveness, and it really trusts language to do all the work. There is so much control over the line here, and expansiveness in thought. Most of all, there is clarity in each poem…This is a poet happy to throw themselves at language and encounter the not always linear, the abstract and so on without losing sight of the poet’s duty to clarity.”
To read the winning poems, visit Ameen Animashaun’s page.
The Evaristo Prize for African Poetry is an annual prize of USD $1,500 awarded to ten poems written by an African poet. Established first as the Brunel International African Poetry Prize (BIAPP) in 2012 by British writer Bernardine Evaristo, who founded and managed the prize for ten years, the Evaristo Prize was renamed in 2022 and is now administered by the African Poetry Book Fund.
President of the UK’s Royal Society of Literature and a celebrated writer, Bernardine Evaristo is an APBF Editorial Board Member; Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London; and the author of ten books of fiction, poetry, essays, drama, criticism, and journalism.
The Evaristo Prize for African Poetry accepts submissions from October 1st till November 1st of every year. To learn more about the prize, visit the APBF’s contests page.