Schwa: In a sound where all Consonants means Loss
Nnadi Samuel(he/him/his) holds a B.A in English & literature from the University of Benin. Author of the micro-chapbook selected by Tate.N.Oquendo 'Nature knows a little about Slave Trade' (Sundress Publication, 2023). His works have been previously published/forthcoming in Suburban Review, Seventh Wave Magazine, NativeSkin lit Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, Quarterly West, Common Wealth Writers, The Capilano Review, Arc Poetry, Poetry Ireland, New Orleans Review. A 3x Best of the Net, and 7x Pushcart Nominee. He won the River Heron Editor's Prize 2022, Bronze prize for the Creative Future Writer's Award 2022, UK London, the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Annual Award, 2022(Texas Christian University) and Virginia Tech Center for Refugee, Migrants & Displacement Studies Annual Award, 2023.
This year's judge was Ariel Gordon.
"Community is made up of strands of connection—culture, kinship, history. We knot ourselves to one another, to places, to language. When a community member is lost, some of those strands are severed and authorities sometimes unravel instead of mending. This poem is a singing strand of connection, of grief and rage, reaching out to the reader."
The annual John Newlove Poetry award, launched in the fall of 2004, commemorates the honest, poignant and well-written poetry of John Newlove, an Ottawa resident for almost twenty years and poet who died in 2003.