Nigerian poet Romeo Oriogun is the winner of the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, with the judges calling him “an urgent new voice in African poetry.” Author of the chapbooks Burnt Men (Praxis) and The Origin of Butterflies (APBF and Akashic Books), he was shortlisted for the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets in 2017 for his manuscript My Body Is No Miracle. His poems have also appeared in the literary magazine Prairie Schooner as well as on-line at the Dissident Blog, Connotation Press, and Brittle Paper, among others. He was a 2019 IIE—Artist Protection Fund Fellow placed in residence with Scholars at Risk, the W.E.B. DuBois Research Institute, and the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University. He joins the OICR as a Summer 2019 Visiting Artist.

Read Elegy for a Burnt Friend here