Safia Elhillo Winner of 2016 Sillerman Prize + Poem

Safia Elhillo (Busboys & Poetry)

The African Poetry Book Fund, in conjunction with the journal Prairie Schooner, has named poet Safia Elhillo the winner of the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, for her manuscript Asmarani! As a winner, Elhillo will receive $1,000 and the University of Nebraska Press will publish her manuscript in 2017. As a member of the judging panel, which also includes the stellar writers Bernardine Evaristo, Matthew Shenoda, Gabeba Baderoon, and Kwame Dawes, who edits Prairie Schooner and directs the APBF, I can say that it was stunning read, and wholeheartedly congratulate Safia Elhillo!

Safia Elhillo, a Sudanese writer "by way of Washington, DC," received her MFA from New School University, and was a joint winner of the 2015 Brunel Poetry Prize. She also is a Fellow of Cave Canem and poetry editor at the journal Kinfolks, and will have a chapbook, also titled Asmarani, appearing as part of the New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tatu), from the African Poetry Book Fund with Akashic Books.

Congratulations also go to this year's five 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize finalists: Nick Makoha (Uganda), a London resident, for his manuscript Kingdom of Gravity; D. M. Aderibigbe (Nigeria), for his manuscript Becoming My Mother’s Son; Viola Allo, (Cameroon), living in California, for her manuscript Schoolgirl from Cameroon; Shittu Fowora (Nigeria), for his manuscript Touch Machines; and Nebeolisa Okwudili (Nigeria), for his manuscript country!

Here is one of Safia Elhillo's poems, from Big Lucks, Issue 11, December 2015. It gives a sense of her work as a whole, but do check out both the forthcoming chapbook and the entire collection, which will be out next year!

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH YELLOW DRESS

i believe that sometimes              we do not die

i will not believe that to be housed in a body
that is black       is to be dressed always
in black for the funeral                 we live forever

our mouths open & a song falls out           thick
with a saxophone’s syrup               & all our dead
in the ground make this land ours             & all
our missing fathers make us everything’s child

today i did not dress for a funeral       today i wear
the yellow dress        & laugh with all my teeth
today my lost ones are not lost to me     they live
in the wind that gathers my skirt

today this is my country        today i say their names
& the all holes left behind            shaped like blackgirls
& blackboys        are lit up by hundreds of faraway stars

today i woke up & was not dead         & tomorrow
might be different but tomorrow       does not yet exist
so i hold my mother’s hand & kiss          the brown valley
between each knuckle        my brother opens his mouth
to laugh & the light pours in          through the gap in his teeth
& no one will ever again say my eyes are too serious

i press my body to a man that i find beautiful      & sway
to a song that knows us                i live forever
with my feet in my grandmother’s lap
&                                      i live forever by the water
with the sun spilled over me       remember me this way
& when they come for me            play the song i love
into the space i leave behind

Copyright © Safia Elhillo, and Big Lucks, 2016. All rights reserved.

Kobus Moolman Wins 2015 Glenna Luschei Prize + Poems

Kobus Moolman (b. 1964), a South African poet, playwright, and author of five individual collections of poems and two collections of plays, has received the 2015 Glenna Luschei Prize for his collection A Book of Rooms (Deep South, 2014). The judge was the award-winning poet and scholar Gabeba Baderoon, and the honor was bestowed by African Poetry Book Fund (APBF) based at the University of Nebraska. The recipient of numerous awards in South Africa, Moolman teaches at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban.

Judge Baderoon says about the book: "“In this close reading of spaces, we trace walls, windows, curtains, corners, our attention caught by the cut beneath the door, illumination flaring from glints of memory…. Yet if his flesh is betrayed, and his heart breaks into silence and shame, the hole in his heart also opens into speech."

African Poetry Book Fund Director Kwame Dawes writes about Moolman, "Every time we bring attention to the wonderful poetry being written by African poets today, we are enacting something quite important for African literary arts, and Moolman, whose poetry I have followed for a number of years, is a poet that more people should know. Our hope is that in some small way, this prize will aid in that larger effort." Lastly, Moolman describes this volume as "a brave/foolhardy attempt to shake up the distinction between truth (fact) and fiction, between autobiography and invention."

Though I am affiliated with the APBF, I wasn't familiar with Moolman's work before this award, but having read it I can without question that it certain merits this distinction and high praise. And now, here are two of Moolman's poems, from Poetry International. Enjoy!

[The sheep move off]

The sheep move off.
The sky gets heavier.
The birds grow lighter.
The wind stands up and stretches.
The trees bend over to pick up the old leaves.
The horizon folds in half, then half again.
The sound of a train drags rough words across the hills.
The hills slowly empty of colour.
He sits down on a stone.
He moves his left hand in circles,
circles that narrow in upon themselves.
His skin crawls with flies.
He makes no attempt to drive the end
of the day away from his bare chest.
He throws his left hand against the wind.
He throws the earth far away from beneath his feet.
There is a tightness in his side again.
A tightness where his faith should be.

© 2013, Kobus Moolman

From: Left Over
Publisher: Dye Hard Press, Johannesburg, 2013, 978-0-9869982-2-5

***

IN BED WITHOUT

So most nights.

So every other night.

So every other night when not with.

So when usual and without surprise.

So together and far apart and beyond all at the same.

So at night time when leaving and standing, watching go

away.

So more or less, this way and that.

So opening, closing, in, out, attached and loose as

a nozzle.

So switched on.

So off.

So when the sky rolls over and on top and big is too
full and the wind is grey as cotton, hand-washed,
hanging up, dripping over the bath, and the plug is
breathless and blocked up with his hair that does
not stop, that does not stop falling, out.

That does not.

© 2013, Kobus Moolman
First published on Poetry International, 2013

Both poems © Kobus Moolman, 2013, 2016. From Poetry International, all rights reserved.