Prayer
By Osahon Oka
Dust potted on bones.
That is how I got here,
Stalked here— intense growth
Turned towards treetop halo— prayer
Angling into heaven’s vast ocular celebration.
Green is your restive colour
Where butterflies brew their fever
and swallows scatter their rave.
On devil grass, hunker down, and I have flattened,— lemon grass
Nosing abundance, green blade in wind tide— ready
To be flung wide open, my senses
Nudging the gladness, the beak
This mockingbird is drinking from.
I roll from that dactyl: flea black bagging, the itch
So, skin would a tactile nest build,
Memory anchored to this moment.
Grace sparkles at the bottom of this surrender.
For if I had not accepted death, the orphan
To whom all my anxieties turn,
Would I bear witness to this snaking bridge
Ants have made, mind tangled in one net,
Or that frog tongue alighting from the gorge, licking
A queen veiled by a beauty wholly hers from her trek
Down the drooping neckline; a link in the lace?
'Yes, you wove the design into this labyrinth,
But what a weather you have built in here?
So bejewelled, its richness robs me
Of my simple idyl: my steel-glass utopia.'
My papier-mâché friends huddled under neon signs,
Stirring - long fingered - cups. Quiet
Palms bobbing in fenced in lakes
Where fabricated deer and swans
Their mechanized lives exhaust
Sipping all these clockwork days.
'You who hoed all this rich loam
For all of us to germinate,
Even gleaming pebbles palmed long by rain,
Make me green: soil unfurling from stem,
Receding as your wild garden blooms.
My tame hungers reclaim.'
Pamilerin Jacob’s Remarks –
This poem's lyricism is unmatched by all others. Its surrealist logic is to be trusted. “Green is your restive colour” recalls Brooks’ “remember, green’s your color.” The poem neatly intersects the sublime without a defect in imagery. Its beauty surpasses its inadequacies. “Grace sparkles at the bottom of this surrender” is hard to forget.
Anna Zgambo Remarks -
Brilliant! I am in love with “Prayer”, and I want to read more of the poet’s work. “Prayer” is a masterpiece.
Commentary by Bridgette James (Excerpt from Soil Unfurling from Stem, Anthology)
The leading poem opens with a depiction of human bones. I’m reminded of Adedayo Agarau’s poem, 'Arrival' (published online at Isele Magazine, December 2024 edition), in which he writes, My bones shake the fortitude of loss. Is the protagonist in Osahon Oka’s piece skeletal remains? I assume the protagonist has disassociated from his mortal remains and his spirit or soul has probably ascended to Heaven. But I’m inclined to believe his corpse remains buried. He has used prayer as a conduit to ascend to Heaven where the poet is left spellbound by a garden.
I’ve always been fascinated with poems about dead people speaking or relaying their experiences back to us from beyond the grave. In his poem, My Dead Father's General Store in the Middle of a Desert' the winner of the National Poetry Competition, 2022 (Published Online by the Poetry Society), Lee Stockdale recounts an encounter between himself and his dead father in a desert. The poet’s deceased father speaks to him. Death poems or ones that celebrate the bliss of dying have been written since the days of John Keats’ (1819) ‘Ode to a Nightingale.’ Admiring a nightingale in a beautiful garden, Keats wrote, ‘Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain.’
Osahon Oka’s wit is to be acknowledged. He hasn’t mentioned the word corpse although the reader knows the speaker is a dead person. Instead, Oka uses a homonym in the quoted lines below. Did you spot it?
‘My papier-mâché friends huddled under neon signs,
Stirring - long fingered – cups’
The heavenly garden depicted in ‘Prayer’ is either a fictitious celestial universe or a scenic garden Osahon has observed in real life. The intriguing events that transpire while the poet is there are imagined by him entirely. Examples are - 'that frog tongue alighting from the gorge, licking / A queen veiled by [a] beauty...' and 'papier-mâché friends huddled under neon signs, / Stirring - long fingered - cups.'
The reader is encouraged to trust the poet's image-rich phrases to illustrate scenes in story told in the poem, using multisensory language.
Professor David Manley in The Cambridge Introduction to creative Writing, 2007, wrote, ‘Every word in a poem is a tiny but essential part of the body and metabolism of that poem.’ Thus, every word in 'Prayer' functions to make it a cohesive piece.
Have you noticed how the colour green is employed symbolically? First mentioned in line 7, we are invited to see a universe awash with green plants. Birds frolic in this green space. The mention of lemon grass evokes the senses of smell and taste. I’m particularly fond of lemon grass tea. The presence of devil grass - what we call couch grass in the UK - connotes the abundance of fast-growing greenery.
In this world imbued with rich life however, is the poet dead? He addresses a listener (probably god) and asks that thing/person to make him green in the end. He wants his soil to be unfurled or shaken out of his stem. Is he a corpse in the soil?
Other surreal characters are present in the body of the poem too, such as the queen (a honey bee most likely) and the paper mâché friends. I'm reminded of the Mexican Festival: 'Day of the Dead.' A whole story unfolds as the reader is immersed in this spectacular piece.
The shape of the poem enhances its charm too. Is it a church building with steps in the last stanza? My imagination went into overdrive.
The protagonist performs an action that affects his environment every time we encounter him: I got here, I have flattened, I roll from that dactyl et cetera. The persona in the poem presents the poem’s most fundamental question in the middle of the piece as if we’re at the climax of the tale.
‘For if I had not accepted death, the orphan
To whom all my anxieties turn,
Will I bear witness to this snaking bridge
Ants have made…?’
As in Adedayo Agarau’s aforementioned poem, 'Arrival,' the poet in 'Prayer' talks about death.
We stay in one setting where a hype of activity occurs as in Adedayo Agarau’s poem, 'Arrival.'
Multisensory Imagery adds to its richness. The poem 'Prayer’ makes good use of what is called ‘imagism’ in creative writing. It employs all seven types of imagery. Here are some examples:
-
· Visual - Angling into heaven’s vast ocular celebration.
-
· Tactile - flea black bagging the itch. / So, skin would a tactile nest build
-
· Gustatory - Or that frog tongue alighting from the gorge, licking / A queen
-
· Auditory - Quiet / Palms bobbing in fenced in lakes
-
· Olfactory - lemon grass/ Nosing abundance, green blade in wind tide— ready / To be flung wide open, my senses
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· Kinaesthetic - I roll from that dactyl
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· *Organic imagery - My tame hungers reclaim.
(*Organic imagery is a type of imagery in literature that appeals to internal sensations and emotions, such as hunger, fatigue, or pain.)
Other literary devices found in ‘Prayer’ are alliteration as in: butterflies brew their fever; swallows scatter their rave or repetition, an example is the adverb of place, here in lines two and three. These make the poem a pleasurable reader for a Literature student.
Osahon's submission was my favourite entry and so won $20 USD as well as the $40 prize.
Photo: Osahon Oka
The anthology: Soil Unfurling from Stem is opened by competition winner, Nigerian poet: Osahon Oka is an English Language and Literary Studies graduate. He is a Pushcart nominee too, whose poems have appeared in journals and magazines like Sontag Magazine, Kinpaurak, Poetry Sango-Ota, Feral Poetry, and elsewhere. His poems have won numerous awards such as The Kukogho Iruesiri Samson Poetry Prize (2nd Place), and the Visual Verse Autumn Writing Prize, 2022.
Big Lights and Thunder
By Onyishi Chukwuebuka Freedom
Bread-moon star. Distance running. Sudden
miracles, in forests of septic tanks, betrayed by kissing- horse of silence.
I too, have dreamed of someone: myself into an image
of this rhapsody. Mayflower compact. Bone marrows
and the blue sky.
Blessings of Rosemary Chukwu. And the plumbers of
iodine immortality. The facelift of evening,
rainfall.
On the ledge of dawn's hands. All things
fading
and fading. And I am begging you again to
stay. Days, you would imagine
the monsters were going into extinction, had
left open the gates of sea for your
homecoming.
Days, you would hold the syllables, which
every river must learn to say to its victims
before stealing their bodies into life.
Here, at valleys —of redemption and
parachutes
Even night moons— at Golgotha, crave for
affection, and in surrender, is worthy to be
praised.
But here is the main trumpet sound— the
legumes and vegetables are pushing their
withered trunks
toward heaven's gate. And there is a
universe
of flamingos hovering. And death is no longer
an end from the beginning.
Pamilerin Jacob's Remarks –
Incredible lyricism (I am reminded of Kaveh Akbar’s Calling a Wolf a Wolf or Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem).
Commentary by Bridgette James (Excerpt from Soil Unfurling from Stem, Anthology)
Runner-up Chukwuebuka Freedom Onyishi’s poem got me hooked from line one. It is reminiscent of Ester Partegàs’ painting: 'Bread Moon.’ I expect the poem to concern itself with the notion of transience. It lives up to expectations. The poet talks about all things fading.
I read the phrase: betrayed by kissing- horse of silence as not only a literal representation of the actions of the horse in the 'Apache Fire Signal ‘painting by Frederic Remington - where the horse appears to be kissing exposed tree roots – but also figuratively it connoted a silence from authorities after the events alluded to in the body of the poem (I read beyond the poem to assume it implied that, this was what happened in the aftermath of the floods in Nigeria).
Social realism has been used by West African poets as material to craft poetry since the 1960s. Writers utilise events in their country as inspiration for good Literature. In his research paper: ‘Symphony of the Oppressed: Intertextuality and Social Realism in Osundare and Sow Fall’s Aesthetics,’ Adekunle Olowonmi, (College of Education, Oyo, Nigeria, 2019), asserts that writers in postcolonial Nigeria employ ‘satire and protest’ to portray their dissatisfaction with bad governance, socio-economic inequalities, and State policies which badly affect the quality of life of poor Africans.
Northern Nigeria has been plagued by floods in recent years, according to the BBC. ‘Big Lights and Thunder’ is an extended metaphor (about inclement weather) - it's a jigsaw. A line-by-line breakdown is needed in order to fully comprehend its story.
This is an ekphrastic poem like Pamilerin Jacob's 'Anti-Pastoral for a twenty-Faced Pathogen' published by the Poetry Foundation. An ekphrastic poem is a type of poem that describes a work of art, often a painting or sculpture, in detail. In his poem, Pamilerin Jacob uses the Murder of Crows to describe his fear of death from COVID. In 'Big Lights and Thunder,' the reader is plunged into a world where water is a destructive force with intertextual through references to famous works of Art.
In 'Anti-Pastoral for a Twenty-Faced Pathogen,' P. Jacob, observing the painting, 'Anguish' by Schenck describes 'a murder /of crows sprouting / at the perimeter /of a mother’s/ suffering.' (Copyrighted, published by Poetry Foundation, Online.)
Whereas in 'Big Lights and Thunder,' the poet localises us in a setting in Nigeria akin to the depiction of the scene in ‘Redemption Valley’ by John Wynne Hopkins:
'Here, at valleys —of redemption and
parachutes
Even night moons— at Golgotha,'
In Pamilerin Jacob's poem (cited above), the threat is manmade: COVID; by contrast the threat in 'Big Lights and Thunder' is a naturally occurring element: water, whether it be a raging sea or rain. The sea in Onyishi's work is inhabited by monsters ready to swallow up human bodies. Those lines are a nod to the West African belief in the mythical power of the sea. However, I also see an allusion to news reports about a regional river in Borno State bursting its banks and wreaking havoc in Maiduguri, in 2024.
I was delighted that Onyishi's clever piece referenced famous works of Art. 'If you bring Art into poetry, you make poetry Art.' 'The Flamingos' by Henri Rousseau signifies Henris's idea of a paradise in exotic worlds. It depicts the wild but gentle beauty of a tropical riverscape. 'Horse Man in Forest' by Frederic' - also called the 'Apache Fire Signal' - celebrates a nocturnal landscape, 'Mayflower Pilgrims' is a drawing showing the arrival of pilgrims or founding fathers of America, on the Mayflower ship. ‘The Crucifixion of Jesus (at Golgotha)’ by the School of Duccio, 'Redemption Valley' by John Wynne Hopkins are also referenced in the poem.
Moving away from the aesthetical value of these illustrations, the central question in the poem under discussion is: how can anything beautiful sprout out of septic tanks? An image of septic tanks is the direct antonym of an image of the beautiful Nigerian landscape.
There is a spiritual dimension to the poem as well. The reference to Golgotha for me evokes the question of Jesus's surrender to the forces of evil which ultimately is worthy to be praised because his death is seen as a gateway to everlasting life. Again, the poem ends with the line: and death is no longer an end from the beginning. I'm reminded of Jesus' crucifixion - depicted in a painting referenced in the body of 'Big Lights and Thunder' - which is apparently the beginning of eternal life for mankind.
I'm lured back to the dependence on Art in the piece. The phrase valleys of parachutes brings to mind an image of the painting by John Wynne Hopkins, which depicts the drop of the 4th Parachute Brigade on Ginkel Heath, on the 18th September 1944. I foresee death and destruction but in the poem; 'Big Lights and Thunder,' legumes and vegetables are rejuvenated. This is because the stunning piece ends on an upbeat note.
With regards to pacing in the poem, perhaps the poet is either running or walking at a fast pace and taking in their surroundings like Dr Jason Allen-Paisant did in his poem, 'In the tree, the primal ocean.'
The setting in the poem is nighttime which gives way to dawn - it opens with a reference to the galaxy: moon and star. Big lights might refer to the moon in the night sky or the central light on a stage. We await a musical performance by the poet.
The reference to thunder in the title is reminiscent of Chrisopher Okigbo’s ‘Thunder can Break.’ Metaphorically speaking, thunder represents destruction in Nigerian poetry.
I’m reminded of the sociological concept of Shared Cultural Beliefs as I read the line: Blessings of Rosemary Chukwu. I’m thrilled the poet mentions Nigerian singer, Rosemary Chukwu who sings Igbo gospel songs - I presume poet Onyishi is Igbo too. Readers from his culture will relate to the 'hope in times of adversity message' in her songs as they encounter the sad event of the sea swallowing victims in ‘Big Lights and Thunder.’
In terms of its overall style, line-length is a strong feature of this poem. In fact, I’m going to advance an argument that line breaks are used as well as in Adedayo Agarau’s poem: ‘Arrival.’ In Chukwuebuka Onyishi’s piece the brevity of lines might depict a moving person or fast-occurring action. Their eyes settle on the landscape which they interpret figuratively.
‘Big Lights and Thunder’ is an imagery-infused poem too as with ‘Prayer.’ The phrase iodine immortal connotes the idea that sufficient iodine intake might be linked to increased longevity, particularly in older adults. Perhaps the poet needs it to preserve his/human life.
Luminance and the sound of music prevail throughout this poem in the face of impending disaster. I think it relates to the line: Now I am a man waiting for the rain to stop penned by British poet: Rashed Aqrabawi in the 2025 Spring edition of Poetry Review. You may wish to take note of how the noun moon returns as a verb: moons in ‘Big Lights and Thunder’ and the repetition of the word Days. The poem has a melodious ring to it!
I'm in love with this ivy league poem from the runner-up and awarded it the 'Best Metaporical Poem Prize' too; won $15 USD overall.
Photo: Chukwuebuka Onyishi
Chukwuebuka Freedom Onyishi was the runner-up in The Annual Bridgette James Poetry Competition, 2025. He is a poet, essayist and Publicity Secretary. He is the current Winner of the 2025 COAL (The Coalition of African Literature, a Nonprofit organisation in Nigeria), in partnership with the University of Leicester’s Avoidable Deaths Network and the SEVHAGE Literary and Development Initiative.
Sigh
By Clement Abayomi
The sea is swelling. It's becoming a beast with no
borders. It no longer rises with ease & its breath
is heavy with dolour. I hear it in the distance—
a painful scream thrusting into the echo of the
wheezing wind. It's a song we’ve long taught
the sea to sing. The shorefronts are crumbling
like old walls & I see the soft edges of the world
shrinking into the slackened mouth of the ocean.
Soon, the soil begins to slip through waters,
& green grains, scattered across the face of earth,
forcedly tether themselves to the pull of the tide—
each becoming a relic of history & a story washed
away before it is told. The slender sky is bruised,
& the cool cloud is wounded with rashes of smoke.
I see the rain—urinating on earth—it drowns, pours
down in torrents, hammering against tired roofs &
splashing a reminder that nature has its own language
& we [have] failed to listen. Again, [t]here is the crack
of ice—breaking, far away in places I’ve [n]ever known.
It sounds like bones shattering, like the earth groaning
under its own burden. I tread & then I see glaciers weep
black tears into the sea, their purity dissipating into oblivion.
When shall my body feel the stillness of the sea again? How
long do I keep melting under the heat that descends on the
world like guilt, like gnawing truth against swollen ignorance?
Every day, the air grows feverish; its irregular pulse moves too
slowly for comfort. Still, industrial farts continue to swim
freely in the air, hurrying to engulf my breath & rend my
respiration into expiration. Sometimes, there is a burning
hotter than the one licking the forests, blackening the naked
barks & green wings of innocent trees. A burning turning
nutrients into ashes for hungry bellies, for the wind
that longs to smell the aroma of clean earth; yes, too
cold is our knowledge that it burns us. & now, the
earth is ill at ease, sighing before our (un)doing.
Anna Zgambo's Remarks-
I appreciate the auditory imagery in this poem.
Commentary by Bridgette James-
Sailing into third place, was this exceptional piece about industrial pollution from the previous competiton winner. I like how we are taken from a waterbody to into the air - the wind. When shall my body feel the stillness of the sea again? Is Clement Abayomi talking about himself or is he the land/country being polluted?
Clement is a wordsmith who likes playing with words- examples: (un)doing, [n]ever.
Photo: Clement Abayomi
Clement Abayomi won the inaugural Bridgette James Poetry Competition, 2024 with his poem, 'These Feet are Not Too Feeble to Fly.' His came third in The Annual Bridgette James Poetry Competition, 2025. He is presently studying English Language at Lagos State University.
The Path Where I Learned "Wilt"
By Egharevba Terry
There was a path I once knew—
stitched into the skin of memory,
scarred with the slow ache of rain and cracked feet,
a road soft enough for ghosts to walk barefoot.
It led through Òró trees sagging under thirst,
past ridged farmlands, the earth’s old face,
through cassava fields whispering dry songs to the sky.
The wind stitched dust into my ankles.
Cracked Agbalumo pods bled sap along the way.
Gbúrè tangled like desperate fingers,
Ewúró shivering at the edge of thirst.
Everything staggered in borrowed grace.
Everything bent, in time.
The bush path taught me:
to blossom is to bargain with vanishing.
Now, as I return home,
this path flows broken beneath my feet.
In dreams, the broken path finds me,
fields cough dust into the mist,
ghost vines threading the land’s brittle bones.
I reach for guava leaves—they dissolve like smoke.
I call to the soil; it does not answer.
Maybe home was never the house at the path’s end.
Maybe it was the path itself—
fraying, withering,
woven from scent and sorrow and forgetting.
Glossary –
Òró: is Yoruba for the Baobab tree: a massive, drought-resistant tree symbolic of endurance and memory.
Agbalumo: is Yoruba for African Star Apple: a bittersweet native fruit.
Gbúrè: Waterleaf: a soft, rain-loving vegetable that wilts easily under heat.
Ewúró: Bitterleaf: a hardy plant known for its resilience and medicinal bitterness.
Anna Zgambo's remarks-
This is the best poem (in the compeition) because it creates emotion and sensation with simple words. The poet understands economy of language and knows how to move the reader.
It's a winner, in my opinion, because I feel inspired to compose more African imagery after reading about oro and agbalumo in Yoruba land. The poet made a risky decision to include his/her culture and showcase his/her roots, and this should be rewarded. The lines flow, and the concept works. This poem has the power to become a classic.
Pamilerin’s Remarks-
The poem excels in multiple regards. It surprises, it is inventive, its mention of Yoruba words are not mere caricature, even when it fails. I could go outside and see this street being described, living here. In fact, the mention of Òró tree and the context in the poem recalls, for me, a memory from childhood which then ties back to the second line of the poem (though I fear there is misappellation at work, the baobab is igi oshe and Òró tree is different). But the misappellation is forgivable, art renames, often reinventing the objective (Keats: beauty is truth, truth beauty).
Also, these lines, I cannot get them out of my head:
The wind stitched dust into my ankles.
Cracked Agbalumo pods bled sap along the way.
Gbúrè tangled like desperate fingers,
Ewúró shivering at the edge of thirst.
No kidding, I could use this poem for a workshop on how to write about home while avoiding the pitfalls of fetishising. I’m eager to see the name behind the lyric.
*A revised version of poem was used in manuscript. Poet awarded the $10 Judges' Favourite Prize.
Photo: Egharevba Terry
Egharevba Terry's poem was highly commended in The Annual Bridgette James Poetry Competition, 2025. He is a Nigerian banker who writes as if exhaling ache, his poems bruise softly, drawn from waiting rooms, broken clocks, and borrowed faith.
He said, 'This poem draws from my return to my grandfather’s homeland, where the gardens and fields that once taught me the language of life now whisper their slow farewell.'
House of Water
By Oladosu Daniel Ayotunde-Jacinth
We build where the soil remembers water.
In the rainy season, the streets of Lagos turn to rivers—
whole houses drink until their bones sag,
their skins soaked in the wet breath of the flood.
In Lagos, the rain comes like a memory—
old as the riverbed, filling the air with its song.
Houses drink from the flood, their walls swelling,
soft as clay that remembers the hands that shaped it.
Each year, the flood sweeps in, not as a conqueror but as a visitor,
its waterline traced in mud, in stories passed down like inherited land.
Even the walls grow soft as if remembering their origin in the earth,
as if they want to return to the clay they were shaped from,
to sleep once more in the belly of the land.
Roof beams tilt in prayer to the sky, the walls softened by silt,
as if waiting for the river to speak again,
to leave behind not ruin but the promise of fertile soil,
& maybe green shoots.
But the flood leaves its taste behind, in the corners, in the cracks.
We live on with it in our lungs, learning to swim in the dust
until the rains come again.
We live inside this thirst. The water knows every crack,
seeping into the bones of our homes,
turning them pliant. The roof sags, the walls bend
like knees in prayer— a kind of surrender.
We walk between houses that lean into silence,
their ribs fragile, yet holding on— just like us, holding on.
Judges' Feedback -
This poem flows, and every line is pleasant to read. Poem finished fourth and was awarded $10 USD.
Photo: Daniel Jacinth
Daniel Jacinth came fourth in The Annual Bridgette James Poetry competition, 2025. He is a final year student of the department of music, University of Ibadan. He is also a creative director, a political enthusiast, and a social media manager.
All of It
By Solomon Hamza
listen, this poem reminds me of beautiful things.
beautiful things that abode in this country,
despite it's striving grief. from the undulating hills
of Obanliku, adjoining each other like playful kids
locking arms to the many mountains that stood out
like a sea of heads in the Mambilla plateau. from
the grassy flatlands in Katsina that strain your
eyes to keep looking until all you see is the blue
& white sky kissing the Earth in harmonious
bliss to the damp saltiness that hovers above
impenetrable visible roots of creeks in the Niger Delta.
from the doting eyes on the Zuma rock that bid you
welcome to the Olumo rock whose bald hair glistens
from the sun's ray. these things would take your
breath away. i should stop here, but I'm reminded
of the mandrills & chimpanzees playing hide-and-seek
in the forest of Okwangwo. or the sound of fluttering
leaves & gurgling streams serenading the Owo or Udi.
the Iroko & Mahogany in Okomu dance to the flute
of the wind, but still refuse to bow when the show
is over. this is not arrogance, but resilience. the
same resilient spirit of any Nigerian. here, an
Anambra waxbill singing choruses in the sky or an
African mouse's roof beneath the soil mean this
place belongs to us all. & i am in love with
all of it.
Commentary by Bridgette James
Can every day prosaic language ever be poetic? My response would be an emphatic yes, after reading this piece. I would make comparisons to the readable poetry of Tiffany Atkinson who is a Leverhulme Research Fellow and Professor of Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of East Anglia. Her poems were featured in the April/Spring Edition of the Poetry Review.
I feel like the poet in 'All of it' is addressing me as I chanced upon them while they were enjoying the view depicted. I like the use of spaces/cesura. The poet is speaking and thinking about what to tell me. Lower case letters make the poet insignificant in comparison to the view. Good use of visual and auditory imagery.
Obanliku is in Cross river States. The Mambilla Plateau is a plateau is in the Taraba State of Nigeria. Okwangwo Forest borders with Cameron. The mention of places like Owo or Udi is symbolic. They are used to represent the qualities of the inhabitants in these areas. I love how a description of the African landscape is intertwined with the mention of human attributes. Is this Christopher Okigbo reincarnated? Is this Adedayo Agarau?
I loved this poem so much I've memorised its lines and awarded it $10 USD.
Photo: Solomon Idah Hamza
Solomon Idah Hamza's poem was commended in The Annual Bridgette James Poetry Competition, 2025. He won the Ngiga Prize for Humour Writing 2025 and Afristories Prize for Horror Flash 2022. He was shortlisted for the Enugu Literary Society 2024 and was longlisted for the Kikwetu Flash Fiction 2023. He has been published in Brittle Paper, Salamander Ink Magazine, Isele Magazine, Olney magazine, RoadRunner Review, Shallow Tales Review, Illino Media, Agbowo, Kalahari Review, Afritondo and elsewhere.
News
The Bridgette James Writers’ Grant Replaces Competitions
The Annual Bridgette James Competition returns as a Writers’ Grant in 2026. Funds will be provided to assist a chosen poet (for 1 (one) calendar year) with the cost of a pamphlet, a chapbook or writing competitions entry fees instead. One poet from an underrepresented community will be chosen through a rigorous selection process with a criterion to be made public in the new year.
Thanks for Reading.