Romeo Oriogun, a Nigerian poet and essayist, has won the 2022 Nigeria Prize for Literature for his poetry collection “Nomad.” As the winner, he earned $100,000 in cash and a plaque.
The book by Romeo Oriogun was chosen from a shortlist of three, which also included “Memory and the Call of Water” by Su’eddie Vershima Agema and “Your Crib, My Qibla” by Saddiq Dzukogi. “Nomad” was one of 288 others that entered the competition in 2022.
The judges thought “Nomad” was the best in terms of how well it was written. It was about migration, which is a very current topic, and it was written in a way that was full of lyrical figures. They stated, “The 67 poems in the collection were held together by a travel motif, marshalled in each poem with equal intensity, and linked to the African past, including the Middle Passage, and the African future.
Cheluchi Onyemelukwe, Jude Dibia, Oke Ikeogwu, Tade Ipeadola, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, and Chika Unigwe are previous recipients of the award.
Romeo Oriogun is no stranger to being an award winner. He was awarded the Brunel International African Poetry Prize in 2017. He is a finalist for the Lambda Prize for Poetry and the 2020 Future Awards African Prize for Literature.
The graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop is also the author of “Sacrament of Bodies.”
Congratulations, Romeo.
