20.35 Africa Calls for Nominations for Newly Launched New Poets Series, Highlighting Contemporary African Poets

On the heels of the third volume of 20.35 Africa’s annual poetry anthology comes the New Poets series, a monthly series that provides individual visibility to contemporary African poets, prioritizing poets living on the continent. Each month, 20.35 Africa editors will choose a poet to be featured on our website and promote their writing through a targeted social media campaign for the duration of the month.

We are calling for 20.35 Africa’s readership and the greater African poetry community to nominate any and all up-and-coming writers whose talents merit an international audience. We are seeking to highlight poets with groundbreaking, paradigm-shifting writing; poets who offer new lenses through which to see and navigate the world; poets whose personal narratives enliven others; and poets who, until now, have not been recognized for their striking and tender words.

Do you know a young African who fits the bill? We want to know them too! Nominations for the New Poets Series are open to the public on a rolling basis, and we encourage you to send us your freshest and most electric voices.

We’ll favour poets between the ages of 15 and 35 years for this series.

Nomination Guidelines:

• To nominate a New Poet, send the poet’s name, up to 5 links to their works available online (video and/or written), and if possible, their contact address to submissions@2035africa.org.
• For poets whose work cannot be found online, send a sample of up to 10 poems in a PDF document.
• Poets may nominate themselves for this series.
• The email subject should read “20.35 AFRICA NEW POETS SERIES NOMINATION.”
• We do not guarantee that we’ll feature every poet nominated for this series. However, we’ll give each nomination we receive equal consideration.
• Be rest assured that we’ll receive your nomination once it’s sent in. We’ll only get back to those nominations we’ll be interested in featuring. Therefore, don’t expect an acknowledgment of your nomination once you send them; our workload has doubled.
• We are accepting nominations on a rolling basis.