WHEW! Coming up with the KAPP Long List was no mean feat! Our sincere gratitude to our 3 experienced Long List judges- Chris Anyokwu, Charles Akwen, and Rotimi Babatunde – who had to go through the entire Broad List over the past few days to determine which 40 poems they feel should make the next round. A lot of good poems had to be sacrificed but, in the end, we think their selection will definitely give our Grand Panel a tough time.
Here’s the Long List of 40!
- 911
- A poem is a witness in a disarrayed country.
- A soul’s voyage.
- A visit to my father’s identity.
- Aduni.
- After the night of the massacre, tollgate.
- Anti.
- Ashes for beauty.
- Atlas.
- Babel
- Before I knew too much.
- Bodies exiled.
- Caliban, after the sail.
- Dancing in ancestral footsteps.
- Dedications.
- Grass and grace.
- How can I say goodbye?
- I didn’t break, I opened.
- If the world becomes devoid of luminance.
- Igbo landing.
- I’ll die a poem.
- Inferior.
- Lone thread lost
- Mariposa.
- My pen is pregnant.
- Not today
- Not yet devoured.
- Refined.
- Roots and wings.
- Silence, my mirror.
- Six feet apart.
- Soro soke, but the voices stay silent.
- Suicide, not an option.
- The Chicken Yard
- The smallest mark that decides our exile as a cartography of breath
- The whistleblower.
- Thorns of wordbeats.
- Tremor
- We have all lost our senses.
- Where sound sleeps.
Congratulations to all long-listers! To broad-listers who didn’t make the cut, keep the faith and keep writing! More Poetry Challenges coming up! See you at the Short List announcement, Webcitizens!
Chris Anyokwu
Chris Anyokwu is a Professor of English at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. He is a poet, short-fiction writer, dramatist, rights activist, literary critic, public intellectual and columnist. He has over fifteen creative works to his credit.
Charles Akwen
Charles TERSEER Akwen, a poet, playwright, performer, photo(bio)grapher, literary and cultural critic, and Lawyer, is the author of several books among which are On this Land: Tattoos of Bulletholes (Poetry), and Across the Strait (Play). He is the founder of Transcultural Writers’ Network, and African Association of Taiwan Studies. He currently lectures in the Department of English, University of Lagos, Akoka, Nigeria.
Rotimi Babatunde
Rotimi is the 2012 winner of the prestigious AKO Caine Prize for Literature. He has received fellowships from Ledig House, New York and The MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, among others. He has participated in International Playwriting residency at the Royal Court Theatre, London and is a 2005 Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation guarantee. His play, The Bonfire of the Innocents, commissioned by Riksteatern (Sweden’s National Theatre) was on tour in translation across Sweden. Rotimi Babatunde lives and works in Nigeria.
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Rotimi Babatunde#molongui-disabled-link
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Please I feel like attaching the poets name to the poem would also be helpful because of a scenario where two poets give the same title to their poem and they both get shortlisted however unlikely that may be
Thanks for the observation, Ankeli. Not putting up names is deliberate at this stage to ensure that our judges’ selections are strictly based on the poem itself and not influenced by name, gender, nationality or any other external factor. This article is now in the public domain and accessible to everyone so we need to maintain the competition’s incognito policy. That is also why we stressed that no personal details should be written on entries. Fortunately, no two poems have the same title in this challenge, so the authors should know whether they made the lists or not. Not to worry, we will publish names in due course.