I want to thank Emma Patterson and Monica MacSwan at Aitken Alexander. I want to name and say thank Kevin Quashie, for his remarkable, tender work, The Sovereignty of Quiet, and too, the brilliant Lynnee Denise for bringing me to it. ‘It takes a village to bring a book into the world and I am in deep gratitude to the individuals who have held this work and myself with such love. Without these people and their brilliance, writing would be a very lonely pursuit.

I exist within an ecosystem of makers, thinkers, scholars, and enthusiasts who have in so many ways supported me across the years. Quiet is a book that thinks about Black interior life but it also considers what it means to gather, to move collectively in steadfast hopeful action across time, across space, through the dark as well as the light. Valued at €10,000, the prize is sponsored by the John Pollard Foundation and administered by the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre in the School of English at Trinity.Īdukwei Bulley said: “I’m unspeakably honoured that Quiet has been named the 2023 winner of the John Pollard International Poetry Prize. This is the fifth year of the prize, which is awarded annually for an outstanding debut collection of poetry in the English language.

Victoria Adukwei Bulley wins 2023 Pollard International Poetry PrizeĬhair of the judging panel, Prof Eoin McNamee, Director of the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre, said: “These poems call out in the quiet, the personal and the political fused, the poet falling through the self and plucking from the air bright marvels, lost and stolen language, defiance, lamentation and beauty.”

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Leaves of grass poem