Nigerian poets Tolu Oloruntoba and Othuke Umukoro have been named among the finalists for the 2026 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, placing two African writers on the shortlist for one of the notable international prizes for contemporary poetry.
The finalists were announced by Arrowsmith Press in partnership with the Derek Walcott Estate and the Derek Walcott Festival.
The annual prize recognises a full-length poetry collection by a living poet who is not a citizen of the United States, with green-card holders eligible.
Oloruntoba was shortlisted for Unravel, published by McClelland & Stewart, while Umukoro earned a place on the list for Fenestration, published by TRP: The University Press of SHSU and Masobe Books.
The 2026 winner will be selected by American poet and translator Rosanna Warren, who is serving as the sole judge.
For Oloruntoba, the latest nomination represents a return to the competition. His collection Unravel was previously a finalist for the 2025 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry and the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
The collection examines ideas of dismantling, reconstruction and the cyclical nature of change, exploring what it means to break apart and remake both the self and the world around it.
Unravel was also named among CBC Books’ Best Canadian Poetry Books of 2025 and became a Calgary Herald bestseller.
Oloruntoba’s return to the Walcott Prize shortlist further strengthens the international profile of a collection that has already attracted significant critical attention.
Meanwhile, Umukoro’s Fenestration takes a different but equally expansive route, bringing together public history and intimate memory.
The collection confronts some of the most difficult episodes and questions surrounding African history and contemporary life, including the transatlantic slave trade, HIV, environmental threats and the experience of personal loss.
The poems return to the history of Ghana’s Elmina and Cape Coast castles, sites where enslaved Africans were imprisoned before being transported across the Atlantic during the transatlantic slave trade.
But Umukoro does not approach history solely as something distant.
The Derek Walcott Prize was established to honour full-length poetry collections by living poets who are not US citizens, creating an international platform for writers working across different literary traditions and geographies.
