Nigerian poets Tolu Oloruntoba and Othuke Umukoro are among the 15 finalists for the 2026 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, bringing two Nigerian collections into an international field that includes poets from across the literary world. Oloruntoba is a finalist for Unravel, published by McClelland & Stewart, while Umukoro is recognized for Fenestration, published by TRP: The University Press of SHSU and Masobe Books. The other finalists include Mona Arshi, John F. Deane, Karen Downs-Barton, Robin Durnford, Lorna Goodison, Ye Hui, Evan Jones, Esther Lin, Theresa Munoz, Thomas McCarthy, Bernard O’Donoghue, Tom Paulin and Stav Poleg. The Derek Walcott Prize, established in honour of the Saint Lucian Nobel laureate, is awarded annually to a full-length poetry collection by a living poet who is not a US citizen. This year’s prize carries a $2,000 award, with poet and translator Rosanna Warren serving as judge.
Oloruntoba comes to the finalist list with a substantial record of recognition. Born in Ibadan, the Nigerian-Canadian poet and physician is the author of The Junta of Happenstance, which won the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry and the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize, as well as Each One a Furnace, a Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize finalist. His earlier chapbook, Manubrium, was shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, and his poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Unravel, his third collection, moves through questions of Nigerian identity, immigration, displacement, belonging, fatherhood and the literary imagination, and has itself been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.
Umukoro, a Nigerian poet and playwright from Olomoro, Delta State, also arrives with an established record in African poetry. He won the 2021 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, selected from more than 1,000 entries, for poems addressing family, hope, depression, loss, sexuality and HIV. He later graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he won the Academy of American Poets University Poetry Prize, and his debut collection, Fenestration, won the 2024 X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Diane Seuss. The collection brings together intimate and historical concerns, including the memory of a dead father, the transatlantic slave trade, HIV and environmental vulnerability. His inclusion alongside Oloruntoba places two poets with distinct bodies of work and significant international recognition within this year’s Walcott Prize field.
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